Still Life

Small Pleasures and a Miracle

We went exploring one amarillo Saturday hoping to discover the discrete charms nearby aged Texas towns. Small pleasures were the order of that day. Shared they would become a lasting pleasure. Antiques were a convenient focus since the area screamed "antiquated." The visual cues, bringing to mind words like, "dilapidation, ramshakle" were alluring. One town actually had a wacky tornado as its high school mascot. Plus, a few towns were really noted as antiquing hotspots. Maybe we'd find something irresistible, dusty, aching.

At the very worst, I'd have a few more wind-scrubbed landscapes for my memory of the hard beauty of the Texas high plains. With some luck, we'd at least scrounge an insulator or two from the power lines along the abandoned railways. A good friend has a weakness for the watery viridian of these glassy plugs. The lines were as powerless as the tracks and ridiculously near the ground. Probably set low due to the constant wind there. Still looked silly compared to the tall railroad trees in the mideast where I grew up.

Antiquing in the Southwest requires special visual skills. It's a special kind of biathalon event involving light. Strong bleaching sun and wind make you squint (for god's sake, save the retinas!) and dry you out. Enter the antique shop and it's the land that illumination forgot. "Adjust retinas, damn you!" If objects held any drama, you'd expect to find Carravagio painting these stagnant, blind interiors.

Architectural salvage is the other kind of antiquing in these towns. Just enough neglect and disregard for many buildings to retain a version of their original charms. Slouching, beaten, but still standing, still insisting on some respect.

This is Cornell, writ large. His windows found in his precious small boxes that open onto the vast and delicate. Peer into the dark inside after jockeying against the unrelenting sun and maybe, maybe something in there will unfold, stand up and articulate a wonder, a child's delight.

One building held promise because its interiors were destroyed. Not just aged, but artfully axed up and swirled around. Hints of life. Highchairs? Tables? Picture frames? It's hard to explain why destruction holds such promise. I think that when a jigsaw disrupts our seeing world, putting the pieces back together, reassembling a reality, is a necessity and brings assurance and pleasure.

The corner building, probably a business, once a residence, was accessible on three sides. The windows revealed enough to know that we might find something vital here. That optimism did not happen with every building we looked at. The opposition of exterior coherence with the interior chaos held a delicious attraction. Was it at the North wall or the street front where we saw it? Don't know. It became as strange and bracing as breathing at the North pole.

A white barn owl sat on the central stairpost inside this dark maelstrom, still and watching.

How is it possible that a perfect quiet thing finds itself in the middle of such destruction? When you look through a telescope into the deep night, what are you looking for? When you look at an earthquake's rubble, what are you looking for? I yearn to find something whole, a potent reminder of why. Maybe it's just as important for me that the chaos can be contained within a window or a telescope. What do you do when you find a savior in a manger? How is it possible to talk about it, share it, have it together? We squinted into the hard darkness and just took the miracle in, we let it fill us. We took it in.

Co-incidences

First, the pigeons.

Twice this morning, I saw pigeons walking South on the sidewalk alongside a human as if they were companions. Humorous.

Last night, I was watching the Departed (vintage Scorsese, by the way). At a point in the film, when a door slammed, the neighbor slammed their door at the same time.

There was another one, but I forgot it.

Ground

You think that you're able to relax and feel at home wherewhever you find yourself? I know that it's one of the areas of my life that needs work. Luckily, I have a professional visiting who can help me, if simply by example.

Here you see Emmitt hanging out in my bathroom sink, a bit miffed that I'm interrupting his buzz. You can't hear him purring and I was too impatient to capture his cat smile. Not because of impatience really, but because he might have decided that rest time was over. An uppity fur mouse might need a beatdown.

Since Atwood's gone, a large part of Emmitt's daily life has changed. He and Atwood had mostly cordial relations punctuated with occasional disaffection, just like most siblings. They found that teaming up together was an effective way to combat The Man, better known as Marlene and/or me. Eventually, the Stockholm syndrome kicked in and they began to sympathize somewhat with their oppressors. Regardless, they huddled together against life's tepid unfairnesses.

He misses his brother. Even if you're a person who is uncertain about the quality or existence of animal emotions, consider that the guy Emmitt spent all of his day and night with, is gone. That is an enormous change. I don't want to say that emotions are responses to unwanted change. Just that this change affects every hour of his day. At the very least, that is disorienting. Already, talk of a kitten, a companion, is in the air.

He might have us but he is alone now after sharing his life with his brother. His situation reminds me to the reasons why parents often want to have at least two kids. It's certainly about love and joy but also about the hope for companionship. Coming from a household full of kids, I know the manic understanding that can happen between little kids that makes NO sense to anyone but them. Kids and cats can best conspire with their peers. Anyone who's watched kids tell nonsense jokes to each other and scream with laughter knows about this. Sure, adults can find this camaraderie and it's nothing but joy. It's just harder to get to and less frequent, sad to say.

But I'm not a parent and it's probably not solid to extrapolate from cat to child to adult modes of companionship. I'm not much of a psychologist and I was too frightened to have children of my own. My claim here is that how we build satisfaction into our lives and ground them is slippery. As I watch Emmitt and ponder what will make him feel more at home, all is see is a guy wanting interaction. Not much different than me really.

Permission

I don't think that I've ever decently understood that permission was a specific license granted within a specific context.

Pantfulness, Part 2

An addendum to the nearly-going-out-without-any-pants story.

One of my favorite brain malfunctions I've had all my life. I suspect that I'm not alone in this delightful cognitive error.

The other day, I spent a few confused seconds before I realized that the computer couldn't heat my burrito. There just seemed to be no place to put the thing in.

In fairness to myself, my desk is now where my microwave used to be. But those dull moments before recognition were priceless.

A similar idiot thing happened in Florida with me and Scott. "Pasty, white, party of five," was lunching at El Grande Burrito de Mexico (not its real name).

After our waiter brought our beverages, I got Scott's coke and he got my diet. I pointed out to him that our drinks were probably switched. He tried his drink and concurred with me. He said, "No problem, let's switch straws." We did rapidly. There were a few seconds where everyone watched our amazement that this didn't fix the problem. We laughed more than was healthy and then switched the drinks themselves.

No wonder Woody Allen said that the brain was his second favorite organ.

art

I have not been very good at all about keeping artwork or even documenting it. So for the record, here are my three favorite overlook (Louisa Boren Park, officially) pieces. Each of these is smaller than a postage card, which I like. They're also series like which appeals to my sense of production.

I've given away all of the Overlook stuff except for the drawing. This includes the fun experience of giving one away to visitors who were watching over my shoulder as I painted. Very satisfying to give a gift like that.

My latest fun thing is making even smaller paintings which a few of you have received via postcard. I'd like to mail little paintings to everyone I know this year. That would be a fine accomplishment.

Pre-Spring

For those of you experiencing the insanity of winter (bless you, Oswego, NY), here is a preview of what's just around the corner.

I do have an image with a sharper focus of the hydrangea bud but it's too alien-death-mouth for me. Plus, in this one, the branches in the background are nice and blurry.

You can't beat the crocus for menacing crowd shots. I'd guess the tall one is their leader.

Here one of my favorite flowers, the Wrinkleblossom. Unlike the others, this is one of the least horror-film like of all the flowers on my block.

While you're nostalgic for spring flowers, I'm nostalgic for snow. Pain-provoking philosophers have described this duality and have assigned specific nomenclature. You'll get none of that philosophical nonsense from me today. I'm just happy to think about the snow and the imagined silence of a deep woods. The flowers make a similar sound.

Sadness

My kitty Atwood died.

That is a sad thing. I can't adequately eulogize the poor thin man. He was a bundle of annoying traits, a sack of frail bones and utterly loveable.

It was my good fortune to see him the week before he died. Let him crawl on my chest and watch him think about kneading my belly, just like old times.

Here's a picture of him taken last year.
How can such a thing happen?

Florida sans gators

Here are a few pics from the Land of No Gators.

There are no gators in Florida. I don't know how these rumors start. In addition to lacking gators, many of the birds there are blurry as evidenced by this photograph. These birds are apparently owned by the nearby IHOP and they work for squishy bread. Not the greatest of jobs but at least there's work if they want it. I very much would like to see them filling out the little applications with the pencil in their beaks. That's entertainment!

Florida is also filled with flowers based on the percentage of flower photos in my camera. In fact, all the flowers in Florida are camellias, which was a surprise.

Florida skies are dramatic, just as expected. I found them filled with something called "color." This gaudy show is spectacular, sure, but I like the old-fashioned gray skies that I grew up with and are a regular feature in Seattle. Yup, gray is the new black for me. This photo is a bit tilty, which I blame on Florida. It must be a very wiggly state.
There are more photos from the trip. You won't see any of me shooting skeet with Scott (by the way, sounds like a great Sunday morning TV show: Skeet with Scott!), eating mounds of food at the Waffle House or of my lovely family either. They're a great bunch of eggs and what a treat to get to hang with them in their gatorless land.

As much as I kid, I didn't really care about seeing gators. I bet they have foul breath and are ill-mannered. The company I was in was much more attractive and often smelled like various soaps and perfumes. Plus, the fam is fun, awfully nice and considerate, which you can't expect from gators, no matter what the brochures say.