fuzzy

 

 

a fuzzy pair

Lyffan and Loki enjoying a rare moment together at the foot of the bed today.  Lyffan moved just as I started to snap the picture - and she is extremely hard to get a photo of most of the time.  I got a few others of her the night before on my phone but they are refusing to transfer to the computer.  

Had a chance to speak French to a cashier at the grocery store - they were talking about being able to speak 'really good French' in a dream, but they can't speak it well.  He did a better go of remembering sentences than I did, although I understood all of what he said.  I remembered a lot more I could have said to him later - just like in English.  I am still thinking of maybe getting a Babbel subscription or taking some of those online lessons because speaking is still the hardest thing.  Just figuring out what you want to say, in any conversation, is one thing.  Then you have to translate it over.  Trying to figure out if I even should speak in Spanish to the truck drivers at work who keep saying 'no english' to me is hard enough.  I did write up a card in what I am sure is awful grammar to give to them with the dock instructions when they tell me that next time.

 

I did the walking route yesterday at the post office, for the first time in about four months.  I normally have my own route to do on Saturdays, but they had circumstances with people quitting and being out on surgery and I had to be shuffled to make sure they had someone there that could do every route.  In the middle of the day I stumbled off one of the porches - not a very tall one, but concrete steps - and somehow did a 'ta-da' type Spiderman crouching catch at the end and stood up surprised that I hadn't actually fallen on my face, instead.  Happy, yes.. but definitely also surprised.  I didn't get hurt, not even tearing up my hand because it was on grass - but I knew I'd feel the extra muscle work today.  I felt ALL my leg muscles today, because I haven't walked that fast for that far for a while - but I definitely feel the opposite knee and thigh muscle responding to the catching pose that I ended up in.  I am not Spiderman.  repeat after me... *ha*  

Being hypermobile is sometimes a good thing, maybe a bit more 'rubber' when it comes to some sorts of falls and catches - and the knee or ankle that might fold up and give out one moment instead of breaking will hurt like a * but 'snap back in place' and be usable - but also you definitely feel it later, comes back on with a vengeance the next day like 'WHAT did I do to myself.. oh right, and that could have been worse, so suck it up and also be more careful'.... and you really have to be more careful with it until it has time to heal, because now it is less likely to have that rubber-response as it has already used up that flexibility and now will tear easier.. and when you tear the skin up like catching with your hands and knees on the ground that is always taking longer to heal up than a 'normal' person would etc.

 

It has been fairly warm and raining all day - but it is supposed to get down to freezing and maybe snow a little tomorrow and the next day.  I am not terrified of driving in it but I have not been looking forward to when that will come and I have to try to get into the new job in that weather.  Mostly, I worry about the hills being icy.  The start time is before dawn, and I don't like the idea of having to be out there trying to get up hilly roads in the pre-dawn ice.  The post office would often understand if I said I didn't want to leave before first light - because as long as I got there and got it done it really wasn't an issue.  The office job is much more linked to timeclock time and being there consistently on time.  They go by 'the points system'.  ie: A late punch counts for as many 'points' as an absence.  The only way to get the minimum amount of points for not being there exactly from 7 am to 3:30 pm is to attend in the beginning of the day and have a doctor's note for an appointment in the afternoon - and that is still a quarter of a point off.  It's one of those systems made by people who don't have to live through it etc... but it is what it is and so far I haven't had to have any 'points' knocked off - because I knew the ice was coming I have just tried to do it all correctly and hope the weather cooperates.

 I'm going to get to bed and let tomorrow 'be tomorrow'.... I was quite tired earlier today and took a nap for a few hours while the rain was falling the heaviest.  Esme went out to do chicken feeding about that time and two of the dogs came and told me they were worried about her and she was 'out in the weather' and I had to let one out and calm the other one down until Esme came back in a few minutes later.  We've all had dinner now and the rain is off-and-on, so they are laying down now.

I have done some French on my phone Duolingo, and Japanese on my computer.

January Journals 16

I wish I had put this in my sketchbook I sent to Brooklyn Art Project, it was very fitting.  It was shoved in a cubby in my desk apparently from months ago.

Now Alice, my dear
you have made your steps,
each one of them so winding...
Shall we go into the castle
with its high walls of crumbling stone
and find out who lives there?
Before they burn down the world.

Wow.. I guess I couldn't think of any good imagery for that. I can, now.  Maybe tonight I'll update here and try to sketch what it should have been.

all I had time for, really, today was this
 bits in the margins of my lists and notes

January Journals #15

So we are now about halfway through January.  I've kept up, mostly - the comic counted as a sketch that day.  This is my attempt again to draw the hill by Byas Road and Macedonia, near McKenzie TN.  This is a summer photograph I found via Google Maps.  It still doesn't have the same perspective that piques my interest - and maybe I'll get out there with a camera one day soon and capture just the right angle - not to mention the red grass that is so stunning right now against the black leafless bark.

Were coming further along on the remodel - hope to be done very soon.  Lots of little details and finish work. 

January Journals 14

Simba Learns a Lesson - available here

The automatic drawing style is something not a lot of artists do.  It involves putting pen to paper and scratching out a few rough lines, without any idea of what will come from them.  Then, the artist will sit back for a moment until the faces or bodies in the picture become apparent - and trace out the shapes between the lines to make a whole picture.

The drawing above is done in the automatic drawing style.  The parts that showed through in the original few lines were the mouths of the lions, the beak of the bird on the right, the curve of the rock and the wings of the bird above.

Each of these automatic drawings is truly one of a kind.

Twenty minute memory drawing - trying to remember what that scene looks like by the red grass hill near the Rolls Royce house on the way to McKenzie.. every time I pass it I wish to get a photo but the perspective I see can only be captured from a place where there is nowhere to park or stand.

January Journals 13

waiting room
They took another tooth out at the dentist today.
This is a bit of a vision I had while waiting afterwards.. of peach and green lines encircling and taking the pain out of my head and away and back around

January Journals #12

a quick little sketch of a painting I saw in a dream..  it turned out cute enough to warrant more work.
but not tonight.. very tired

Took Esme to the Star Wars movie, and now it not even quite 8 pm and I am ready for bed
They are taking out one of the last of the nerve exposed teeth tomorrow
and I hope my cabinet has arrived

Automatic poetry


Hope in the Thicket

For all our yesterdays and all our tomorrows
we call you here before the roses
to dream of what could be a
and to see the path before you
not as a stumbling between the thorns
but as a gathering toward the light
that is revealed at the end of the thicket
for it is only a few more dark steps
here in the undergrowth
before we emerge again

January Journals #8

A plan for a wall mural.. but I'm not sure if this will be the dragon that will go there, yet.
Did a lot more today at the tile worksite on very little sleep... time to sleep tonight soon and up and run again tomorrow This is a wonderful little tool for the price - we did more than 3/4 of our cuts at the tile jobsite the past few days with this, and it was nice to not be sprayed with water in 30 to 50 degree weather for every single cut.

January Journals #7

Daffodil Hill, Mixie,  Tennessee
The colors shining through the trees here, and the cascading of the light - I saw it as potential for another drawing or painting.  It also reminded me of the brindle on the back of a dog or a marbled cake.  I loved the way it ended up being the same direction as the moon in the blue sky, too.

We were out doing tile again today, getting closer to being done with that part of the job.

The best PVC cutter I own, will do up to inch and a half drain pipe, strong blade

mallard in the automatic drawing style

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.

january journals 4 sketchbook

Aladdin

automatic drawing sketch

Picked up a lot of tile, worked on a blanket, talked to customers and did a lot of writing in the morning... time to sleep!

january journals #3

Continuing in the vein of January journals.
A few months ago I sat down and shared ghost stories with a friend, and somehow he dredged this one back up from my memory about a place we used to scare each other silly with in my youth.  I don't know if any of it is true, but this was the rumor and narrative we told around campfires and driving in the back of pickup trucks in moonlight back in the 1980s.


I am going to recount you a tale, a ghost story, from my youth.  It is not one I have found written anywhere else, and I will tell it to you exactly as I remember it.  It happened up in Northern Minnesota, on a farm out in Arbo Township.  There were two brothers, named Capeleddy, and they both lived in a two-story house down on the bend of the road just before the Civil War.  One of the brothers, the older one perhaps, went off to war, leaving his young wife alone at the house.  The younger brother was working in a logging camp, but then he came home to the family farm while the older brother was away.

It was said that the young wife and the younger brother fell in love and had an affair.  I could only wonder if they perhaps had wondered if the older brother was still alive after the war.  They were living in the house when the older brother came back from the war.  When he arrived back home he heard tales from other people of what had been going on out at the farm.  He arrived with a loaded gun, and without asking any questions, shot his younger brother out in the field behind the house.   He was supposed to have shot him through with a shotgun while the brother was defenseless.   Then he went up into the upper story of the house and shot his young wife, as well.  Then he shot himself.  The tale continues that if you go by the Capeleddy farm late at night, especially in the moonlight, you are supposed to be able to see spirits walking through the upper story of the house and in the field back behind it.

But, it was always told to me as a child not to look too hard, and never to let the spirit of the older brother see you, because he would chase after you Washington Irving style and try to pull you into their misery and you would never escape.  The building was completely abandoned in my childhood in the 1980s and falling apart.  Part of the tale could have been told simply to keep children from trying to go there and falling through the floors injuring themselves.  We talked a lot about the place but none of us ever set foot on it beyond the fenceline.

You could see through the upper stories at night that the moonlight really did shine oddly through the building.  I'm sure it was just a trick of  the light.  I don't know if the story is true and the few times I ever tried to look up the name I did not come across anything.  But, who knows?  It could have just been a tale my older siblings made up to scare the pants off of me.  But everyone did refer to it as the Capeleddy farm, and that there were gravestones somewhere on it.  I do know that nobody ever lived there during the decade plus we lived a few miles down the road.


And a sketch in my Brooklyn Art Project sketchbook

  The Alice theme continues throughout the entire book

january journals #2

again had some time to kill while I waited for a prescription

Journal (not related to the image)
It is for none of you and for all of you that the pear grows and the bird sings in the morning.  It is for all who listen, see and participate in the great circle of Nature.  It is for none of you in that it will continue to march its path when all of us are dust and your descendants cannot remember your names.  For that very reason we must do as much as we can to make sure we do not take it for granted, do not gather it all greedily in one place and set it to flame, and do not block the eyes of the children from appreciating there are wonders such as these in the world - that being in the world is precious - and a gift not given but received.


And I promised to do a sketchbook page every day - this is another one of the old farm, remembering when the skunks dug up under the house, Duke, and Mouse and the garden and the clothes on the line...

This paper was in my stack, just a few pages left, time to get some more.  It is extra-rough, which is tough on the colored pencils, but makes for a really great definition.  Take a look at the product below, and help support art!

a little automatic writing also done while waiting for the prescription -
A white soft veil of wind behind the tail of the fox that ran in front of us, its black legs hopping and uncertain to chase or be chased it ran off into the tall grasses without much more than a moment of indecision and yet it was seen by the eight year old with her hands and nose pressed up against the glass of the station wagon each patch of white on chest and stomach and tail memorized for remembering later with crayons and chalk

january journals

I had a lot of time to kill yesterday and I made a couple little journal entries in a new journal that I bought.

Here is the first one - very philosophical

The tree coming up in twisted branches, separating and reaching in two directions - then it decides as many living things do, to double back on itself, to change places. In doing so it may seem to some to lack direction but to me it is the essence of its beauty the assuredness of time spent alive, the faults and thorns and obstacles of life that make us bend with the wind and seek the light. The Beauty comes in the spaces we live in between all the certain things in life, and often, in spite of them.


And the second one - more fun, and hopeful, and silly.

The New Year has come and we all expected it but down in the cracks of my psyche I hear these words ‘twenty twenty’ and am impressed we have made it this far. It seems like such a huge numbered beast, out in its pajamas drinking champagne – something larger than we imagined with punk rock hair but still down to earth, not totally unfamiliar, as it was once described in our childhood.

We have found the monster from where the wild things are and set him down toast and juice and the morning paper, eyeglasses set upon his enormous nose as he tries to do the crossword with a tiny pencil. I imagine myself stealing glances at him through my eyelashes as I cut up my eggs and add more pepper to the tops. I am making sure I am not dreaming, and wondering about, honestly, how badly he will tear up the carpet in the rec room dancing to the Eighties Flashback or how long it will be before he puts out a knee going down the garden stairs carrying too much to the table.

Have we really gotten so old? Is it just that now we are more free to imagine these things give them names and take the risks to bring them nearer to everyday life than to the true fantasy? It is much funnier, when they are near to hand, and much more impactful, as well. In a morning still fading with the sounds of fireworks in my ears, I have let my imagination wander freely. And it is out there in the dining room fondling crystal paperweights and unfolding all of the guest towels with abandon. It is only a figurative guest, but one that brings a smile to my lips as the eggs cool and the coffee begins to sputter. And for this, I think that perhaps twenty twenty and I will get along, if we can just get past hitting our heads on the doorframes.