friday here we go

 Had a lot of things to do early this morning, and went and got them done - groceries, and so forth, and back home before 9 am.  Chopped up all the vegetables to go in the freezer.  Then I had an online meeting at 11.  I helped Mark take photographs and video of his project that he has been making on the 3D printer.  After a bit, Esme will be home and we'll decide what to do for dinner.

since I had that online thing I took a couple of pictures for my artist page to test the camera angles and so forth - but ended up going with the second one for the page

That is a little cat painting I was working on the other night - I still need to add some more black lines and go over a few places before I make the second one.

Last night I made dinner for Esme and I and used half of the weekly container of sushi rice I had made, some kielbasa and orange sweet peppers and a good selection of spices : oregano, paprika, onion powder, black pepper and salt - to make a very flavorful dish.  I definitely want to make that again.

Mark's pizza order:  I always switch up what he wanted to do with the order of the toppings in the pizza - but what makes sense (and he agreed today) is to put the pepperoni on first, then the cheese, then the spices (garlic, black pepper, and oregano).  He always used to put the pepperoni on last, and it would get so crispy that I didn't like it.  But because my instinct is to put it on first, and he didn't do that, it made me stall in the past that he would come out and it would be 'all backwards'.  I thought I'd write it down this time.

Did Japanese and Swedish again today.  The Swedish has went forward into a section that I know a little better.  I'll hear more about the little car hopefully soon, and about the meeting I had this morning.  I work the weekend.

Wayward Sparrows

When the world is loud
and spinning in your head
your heart is thumping
running one hundred miles a minute
now, but not before
when you kept up your smile
and tried your very best
as we do - when it is needed
now, when the curtains are closed
and the stage is empty
all should be calm
but continues fluttering
shaken with intensity
perhaps it is time
to take a walk
let the wind and sunshine
sweep over you
perhaps bringing a word
or a whisper
dropped from the feathers
of a wayward sparrow

bits and pieces

If all you can do is bits and pieces, with your energy, with your time, with the tools you have right now available to you - do some bits and pieces towards making a whole...  Didn't sleep well, had hodge-podge dreams that, even though they really didn't seem to be saying anything in particular, the main theme was that I feel like I don't really know what I'm doing and when other people seem to know exactly what they're doing - I don't see the point.

 

 

Some of my desk creatures on a high shelf I moved them to while I dusted yesterday, looks like they are peering down at me from sitting in my desk chair here
 

poem grumble

Four AM

I have been robbed of sleep again

by dreams of selling purple flashcards

and software applications and paperwork

in a little store – late to get out,

dragging a vehicle up a snowy hill

it would not go up under it’s own power

parking it oh so carefully, tucked between others

in order to get in line for dinner in fancy dress

in the middle of a lumberyard canopy

and yet no one else seemed to get the irony

and continued eating their linguine

in tuxedos and satin dresses

at little placard-graced tables

set up so gracefully on the smooth concrete

alongside the marine plywood sheets

so now, fully awake, unable to continue dreaming

I make multiple trips to the microwave

to heat midnight coffee, barely grown cold

and I ponder, I ponder so many things

And today, I'm doing bits and pieces all day, but it is adding up.  Ugh.  more cleaning - I can only do so much vacuuming before 1.) the limit of the hose really upsets me and 2.) I start to wheeze with some sort of asthma reaction because I'm so close to the floor with it.. it is what it is.

Also did some weeding out in the garden, repotted a plant and started cuttings from it, planted a few seeds, threw some scraps in with some chicken broth (tomatoes and zucch from freezer, carrots from fridge, lentils from cupboard, kale from garden, some of the seasoning packet I've been meaning to use for 'chicken parmesan' stirfry) and now letting that cool down so I can eat some with some bread for lunch/dinner

washed French lentils, 2 carrots, peeled and chopped, three large leaves of kale, washed and chopped, 1 small zucchini (was in the freezer), chicken broth, seasonings, slow simmered in the oven

A mystery seed, some brassica, kale? mustard?  I'm not sure, but it's in a place I can look for it now and it will get watered with the kale, radish and onions.  The poor little rose hip got thrown out.

Did a few more rows on the grey and orange blanket, while I waited for Duolingo to reinstall on my phone.  Pecking away at a high level Welsh section on my computer trying to get the spelling right for political and religious terms **facepalm**  and catching up on Spanish on the phone app after it finally let me back in.

The Morning

 

"La Dimineata' : The Morning

viburnum in jar, colored pencil

  

thoughts first thing in the morning, as I made the bed, and washed dishes, and started the coffee before my shower... I think that many, like me, were trained to think happiness is a warning sign, 'regular happiness', contentedness, not a reaction to some major life event, if we are content it is because something has surely been forgotten, we have slowed down when we should have been keeping up, there is something wrong if we can and do stop and realize that 'we are happy' in this moment, this simple task, this morning, these feet on this road, this small goal made and then reached. And that is so much opposite of the truth. Because we know that it is momentary, and we are looking for 'the other shoe to drop', as it will, eventually, but then we entirely forget this moment, the one we are happy in, WHILE we are in it, in the distrust of it. And we are trained that way, by our society, it seems... Well, I was. And I'm trying to get out of it, here and there, between shoes.

 

Poem (from me)

Le Bonheur

Have you heard it?

That little bell that rings

when you find yourself suddenly smiling

chin on your hand, and you ask Who Me?

Do you see it, that bit of blue

shining out between the tree branches

the taste of your favorite meal

although you had nearly forgotten it

in all the spaces in between

do you feel it?

This is the bonheur

welcome back traveller

drop your bags by the door

while you realize you have returned

to sit upon the hearth and be warmed once more

Medium in Art

'Mortal', ink drawing, 30 minutes, left hand

I keep experimenting, and think that is more being an artist than making four foot murals all in one style etc...  There is a difference between being an artist and being a commercial artist .. although, yes, you can be both, the goal for one 'mode' is necessarily a bit different than for the other.

The Thoughts:
 

My husband was commenting on some art news that (almost) everyone he sees making big splashes seems to be 'one medium' - usually something like oil painting, or welding huge metal sculptures etc etc.. and that is all they do, and they are celebrated for it and the museums are full of huge sculptures and four-foot-wide oil paintings etc while there are thousands of artists out there doing their thing in small formats and whatever medium brings their idea most to light. I do like the variety that is shown in the DayLight Gallery in Camden, TN for that reason.

 

I told him that the one medium I focused on for my years in school was ink - but for some reason the main reaction to that was : 'And it's all 'just' ink - how do you have the patience to do that?', and the second reaction was 'Where's the color'... so yes I have branched out over the past decades into not only colored inks and watercolors, but colored pencils (which are often seen as 'not professional') and pastels and paint ... but the other side of that is that it seems unfocused. You can't have your cake and eat it, too - either you're versatile or you are focused. 'Why do you make so much? Do you ever sleep?' The thing that, I believe, makes me an artist 'the most' is that I am compelled to create, to express, to chase whatever it is almost every single day.

That also equals mountains of work, and little outlets for most of it.. it can be a bit overwhelming at times truthfully to look at it all. I put a few small things in the gallery, or offer one up on a site for a while, but that doesn't mean I'm not making another item tomorrow etc. I tend to send some pieces off to special people once in a while, and then that is sending off little bits of myself to say 'I thought this might mean something to you, too.. and either way, here it is'....

 

 

 'What Can you Reach from Here?', paint and inks

black paint, white paint, blue paint, black india ink, gold ink, brush, palette 

What can I reach from here?  This palette, this brush, these paints, this pen... what about that mountain?  I don't know, I haven't built it yet.

Experiments, like left-handed drawing, and 'we're gonna run with whatever we can reach from this point without getting up.. and we're starting with this brush, good luck...'  It's constraints and yet it's also freedom within the circle to do whatever it is that circle can bring... and then expand it, refocus it, do something else.. and through every single thing you do, each thing that is different from each other, the same element is you - and those that can see that, then they know something more than just the casual observer of one piece

Poem : 

Graywing

The clamor can quiet a bit

that deafening onrush of Time

when watching the plain gray moth

grip the stem of the plant

swaying under its weight

and drink nectar from the white flower

that you had not even seen

Two poems and thoughts

 Random thoughts:

 

my cat has taken to parking herself in my chair every morning before dawn, and not leaving until I pick her up, protesting and hanging like a limp cloth, waving her whiskers at me and half-flattening her ears until I put down her feet gently on the floor beside me and she looks up and says 'oh, it's like this now, huh?' and curls around the foot of the chair in determination that she will remain as close to as exactly where she wishes to be as possible, with this human involved in the process

 

I would like some larger paper, and then I use what I've got

and that takes me long enough already, so I guess that's that

 

I look at my inks and my pigment pens and think I've used up some and don't touch others... but they sell the pens in packs and then I pick up one of the ones I don't usually use and take it for a stroll to do what it can do on the paper in front of me, the same with purple pencils, and reds, and then I am using eight types of things on one piece of paper and perhaps this is how I learn things... they say we all learn through play

 

 

two Poems from today : 

 

 

knitting : what may or may not be a stocking hat

 and the yarn was quite a pain to start out on the dpns, I thought about giving up but decided to give it a little longer, and now I'm a few inches in and maybe just maybe it will come to a fruition

 

Follow that Car

 

Somedays, it can look like a mess

it can be frustrating as hell at times

you can be uncertain you've got enough materials

or if you will ever have the time to finish it

to the standard that is in your mind's eye

and yet, you continue

and that, is when you know you're on to something

Mr. Taximan, follow that car

it's going my way

 

 

  

colored pencil drawing : available at mariemeyer.etsy.com   

the bird was in the grain of the paper, so it truly had to be drawn

Nesting Thoughts

 

All the words have fluttered away from me

in this hour of nesting

thoughts and habits

an hour of practice

unlike any other – even when they start the same

just like words – the image begins at one point

and before I can figure out what to say

it is already taking its own path

I am simply following

the way the motion goes

the crow’s line

drawn between two points

I did not choose

lessons for life

 

 

 sketchbook

I've got a couple of other things I did today, as well.. 

 

 left-handed drawing with some right-handed coloring in on the plant

When is it too much and too little

When it is too much, and too little, and everything in between.

So, there is a project I was asked to do before Thanksgiving, and it has stretched out through what was inarguably a very long, dismal and stressful winter, which could have been worse, and we were so glad that it wasn't.

And I have not done the project.  There have been several small attempts, one large attempt - and a lot of thinking about it and being tangentially frustrated about not doing much on it at all, and not feeling like I wanted to, either.

So, when is too much.  I tend to be a tenacious person about some things, and not at all - at all - about others.  I did try to say I wanted to pass the project on to some other person before - but the project's owner said they still wanted me to do it.  So I kept it, and Mark says it is just too much worry and frustration.  Perhaps, it is, for there will be no return benefit except saying that I actually got it done - it is not for money or for fame, but just what to someone else might be a few turns of the wrist and there - you're done.  

It would be so much simpler if it was like the first project I did for them (perhaps)... that was 'I'd like something like this - it doesn't exist - can you make it?'  This is : Here is the item, go make something exactly like it, the same size, the same look, I know you'll do a good job.  I find, that specifically, is something I'm not good at.  I am not one to replicate something, my perfectionism says I'll never do it.

So I procrastinate.  I attempt and fail.  I get frustrated and then it colors all of my other projects with the feelings.  And of course, I know if I did succeed it would do the same - color the rest with accomplishment... if I do not, and give up, it will remain in the back of my mind.  It is a skeleton I can do not enough good with, and even as a success it would be a three penny postage stamp.  What does that even mean?  I'm not sure.  I've been reading a lot lately, but in tiny pieces here and there and everywhere, and it is like a thousand birds in my air, lyrics, thoughts half-flown, and coming down in the field around me hoping to make some sense as I walk through picking up sheaves.

See what I mean?

Oh look, a rock I found, on a walk in the sun yesterday.  It looks like the ocean.

 

And poems too hot and fresh to have been trimmed yet, just because.  

 

Unspilled

the dark green ink

it beckons

with a swirl in the bowl

but only in my mind’s eye

because the darkness

is beset upon the morning still

and the sunrise, when it comes

will be full of bustling

and the dark green ink

will have to wait again

in it’s bottle, unspilled

like my thoughts, unspilled

Thermal

I’m not the only one who used to

lie out in the snow as a child

after pulling some sled up the hill

and coming back down

leaning back and throwing out my arms

there in the cold and the snow

staring up at the big wide sky, feeling alone

and wondering how long it would take

to freeze to death

I know I’m not the only one who did this

how many do this more than once or twice...

And I think I do it in my life with other things

we lie for a time out in the cold

against all natural instincts, it would seem

until that thing within us clicks over, urging

that we get up, and seek our homes

whether they be of body, mind, or soul

that place our feathered things retreat to

to sit by the fire and revive

and then – we appreciate the warmth all the more

Tides

You’re such a good girl, she said

you never want anything

but oh, how I wanted things

sometimes so hard that they tasted like the blood

from biting my tongue

but they were not things I could ask for

few of them could ever fit in my hand

and always, always, they would be taken away

somehow or another, I learned early

that nothing is forever

everything is always changing

and those things I truly wanted seemed

just beyond my grasp – intangible

until I learned, through much effort

to hold them in my eyes, and my heart

to weave them into those inner webs

and labyrinths that defy space and time

..and then, the tides rose and carried me away

and I was the boat, and the waters, and the moon

Echoes

There are always echoes in here

words to string together, this way or that

all the things said, and unsaid

from this morning, from three years ago,

there is little rhyme or reason

I try to connect the dots,

draw stars and equations around them

not enough paper, not enough ink

not enough thread, to sew it together

I turn on music, to try to drown it out

hum along, sing familiar words

but other words, other times, other places

continue to vibrate

in the in-between places of Memory

where Time is not the rule

one box always opening twenty more

a million scattered keyholes

and so few keys

I try to pick them up like tiny beads

that get stuck under my fingernails

I try to line them up like thin steel pins

to stick them all in place, but into what?

They continue to tumble loose, and rattle

against this box that is my brain

Heart Take Wing

There is only so much

you can choose to say

the rest is up to the heart

may it take wing

and sing to you

Downpours

And when all your years

you believed that the overload

of your senses meant

that you could not handle it

that you must run from it

put on your flat mask

pretend it was not there

like trying to ignore the rain

you can do it – stand there drenched

and be miserable for all to see

run for shelter each time it starts

or you can dance in the downpour

look for the rainbows – prismatic glories

and feel your limbs swimming

watch the drops fall from your fingers

and trace the holes in space as it

bounces off of everyone’s umbrellas

built-in for them – but not for you

perhaps, you are a fish out of water

that swims in the air

and without such rainstorms

where you would be?

I am amazed, also, and grateful - my book has sold nearly two dozen copies in something like a week.  Thank you.  I hope you are enjoying it.  Unspoken Things, Made Words poetry book by Marie Lamb

a bit of painting

I joined a Zoom art group today for a 'craft together' session... I had already painted the 'first try' at one of the landscapes I like on my postal route (from memory, then with help from Google maps for details), and then during the session I made this little fantastical nature painting // the landscape is 8x10 and the other is 11x14

Esme and I went to the 'duck park' - mulberry park, and we only saw three ducks, and they were occupied with another family the entire time.  But, we did get to see turtles, lots of them (maybe a dozen) swimming lazily around the dock and very interested in us.  There were tiny ones and medium sized ones and a very large one.  We wondered if some of them were hatchlings - if this was a family.. or ?  We saw lots of fish, as well.  Esme can see through the water better than I can.  I can see the air currents much better, which I think is why seeing through the water takes so much concentration for me.  She said she can see the air currents too, as I described them, but it makes her eyes hurt compared to looking through the water.  I know what she means - it is like a 'different channel' of seeing, the air as soup, in 3D instead of 2D... and it can be very distracting to see it all of the time.. so I turn it off a lot, too -- trying to see it for a bit is fun, for longer than that, it feels like your eyeballs are going to twitch and come out of your head *ha*

I had a terrible migraine building even before we went to town - but it has been so long since we spent much time.  We walked around the lake, got some fast food, and got a grocery item Daddy wanted.

The migraine continued to build here at home, and I drank more coffee, took a bath... a sinus pill (with no painkillers in it, just decongestant), and an ice pack to the back of my neck.  It started to calm down some, and the last bit of sun was fading outside - so I went outside for a walk.

Went up the road and came back with a bit of this humming through my brain






Take in the June
red tailed hawk...

I have come again to take in the June
the green spires rising and
the early flowers fading while
the summer ones are just starting
to nod their heads in time.


The Spring has been so late
and the Summer that should be is starting
warm and cold and wet and humid
it is a mixed up bag of weather
but perhaps now, as June perches at the
end of the week, the Summer will come.

With it’s heat I dread, and yet I walk here
in the cool of the evening,
the storm having passed by us for the moment,
and the frogs and the creatures of the air
are singing in the distance,
calling to me, and yet
telling me to stay away,
the hunting is good
do not disturb

The scream of the hawk reeling again and again 
from the tree on the horizon  
the glorious gleam beginning to seep in at the bottom edges  
like an eye about to open a glimmer of light 
to a blaze  
instead of to close 
the curtain of night

Wings against the blank white canvas of cloud a profile, a wide circle and display  

I am no mockingbird  
I am no sparrow  
I am the powerful predator of the sky  
‘This place is mine’

He returns to his perch and calls again  
proclaiming ownership over 
all that he surveys  
or perhaps it is a she  
and she has a nest there - it is too far to tell
against that pattern of branches  
each tree like a runic glyph bending this way and that
in a sentence that says Earth and Growth and Time   

A sentence punctuated by Feather and Wing and Claw  
air and forest, wind and green growing things in profusion 
all around me the love of Nature, Water and the Earth  
the smell of it coming from the forest  
the deep dark holes in between the ivies  
the grapevines, wildflowers and weeds,
 the Oak so massive it could be an Evergreen reaching to the sky, 
its glossy green leaves telling its secrets
and the tiny trees, maples and mimosas, fighting at the edge to
earn their own rights to become giants

The scene calls to the mathematical in me to measure it’s angles and partitions
to record these shapes as a word for all to see
on paper and pigments
the trees in the line 
five artfully rendered characters  
each its own world of meaning  
strokes bold against the sky

But no one would read this sentence as I do  
the red and golden grass in the sunset
the trails of white cloud lit underneath  
the rustle of the wind circling and cycloning  
in the spaces in between the tall trunks
with so many staunch branches  
and delicate twigs and myriad leaves  
and the ripping force of claws  
clinging somewhere there  
ready to pounce on small tails and eyes,  
waiting for the oncoming Night

january journals #5 calico at sunrise

The morning light has come upon us. The birds are shrieking like cats out in the cedar trees. My calico is watching them, telling me the jerks and tells of their heads with her eyes. A silent pastime fit for a winter morning bundled within our nest

Morning whiskers claiming my scissors, my pens, every angled surface as her very own, rubbing her chin down along each line and purring loudly.  She jerks her head back as a blue jay swoops down into the leaves in the yard.  Small quivers happening at her jaw as she wishes to warble but does not want the prey to hear.  A tightening of claws on the edge of the seat and back legs start to pump.  Tail twitches.  The bird takes flight.  A shared glance between us, and she resettles to her claim.  Calico at sunrise in winter light.
 

I have an idea for the sunlit attic scene in one of my short stories to think about today - see if I can get it started.  I have to schedule something with a contractor for tomorrow - hoping he will call me back.  But for the moment it is off to get ready for town and then after church the rest of the day will come as it will.

I am still very glad that the injury from dropping the tile was not bad.  In fact, my hands hurt as much from carrying it as my foot does from dropping it.  Another thing to be thankful for.

When the Sun

When the Sun is up over the horizon, but not yet over the rooftops, and all you can see directly before you are shadows and dark branches, but behind them, through the winter scape, you can see the light.  You can see the light that is shining bright and golden, making the sky a glorious blue, a light that, once you are in it, will feel warm upon your shoulders and your face.  The sun is up over the horizon.  It is only a little bit longer.  The darkness is going away.

   

Playing with the way the lights cataract through the branches, lighting up details and others in shadow.  The first picture was my view while making coffee, and the words accompanying it began to spill out so I let them get down to the page.

Wrote this one the other day, and made the picture today when she was still a minute again

Bluetick
My hound her stomach growls
it sounds like a cat warbling hello
and having disturbed herself, she shifts her long limbs
kicking each back leg out into a stretch
black ears and dappled coat salt and pepper gray
she bends her grizzled nose above her loose jowls
which have been drooling on the pillow
yawning, surveying, seeing not her quarry
then she curls into a ball
tucking her lips carefully over leg and tail
nose still twitching
in what she deems a more comfortable position
to grumble and growl
while dreaming of cornered woodchucks from years ago 

 

out in the rain in the red grasses

out in the rain in the red grasses
and catching by the thorns
I want to climb up high and see from above
and yet I do not want to fall
on slickened cedar left to cure
the colors are amazingly varied
intensified by the strange light
I look down and I look up
and around me is the world
just after the cold rain
it is still rejoicing

the magpie poem

This is the poem in an old notebook that began my thinking on the words that would become my book, Time in December.  Buy it for 99 cents on Amazon for Kindle

It was an automatic poetry poem.. but in it lie a lot of the seeds of the original story.  The first few chapters of the book are handwritten in the next few pages... and four years later, it would become a self-published novel.

The Magpie and the Ship of Dreams (12/25/2015 Marie Lamb)

The sweet sordid magpie pennywise and pound foolish
soft as summer snow and rain on the highlands...she flies.

We looked for our sunrise in the leaves of the trees,
the maples in the woods, the blackberry thorns
in the thicket under umbrellas of gray cloud
and spears of clear light

It came to us, gradually, step by step
along the leafborne wind,
casting every pebble out of its way
along the path from the rocky shore
And we awaited it in boats of leaves and twigs,
of twine and parchment
of dreams and the time in between the moments of our lives.

For today we would sail
And tonight we would see the other side of the stars
behind our eyes, heads tilted together
upon the wood upon waves, hearts blessed in their close vicinity.