Bring it on!

These pieces I made in a collage course at Fleisher taught by Fran Golum, at least I think I am spelling her name right.  I wish I could figure out s way to enhance my blog so that these look as magical and I feel they are, but at least they are visible.  I liked the sloppiness and intuitiveness of the work, and Fran encouraged me to begin painting on a large scale... Where on earth would I PUT large paintings?  It all seems so self indulgent but I am drawn to working with texture, fabric, color and shape; quilting is terrific, but it takes so long to complete one, and I cannot be as free and loose with the discipline as I can with painting and collage.

These all have a boat motif even though the bicycle stands out on this purple one and one the next one below.

I photographed these on my green sofa, so the fuzzy green around the edges are just what I was unable to line up properly and the sofa is evident.

This is a little one, and the drip of glue and yellow paint tinting the sailboat is my favorite.  Also, I love the dog's head stuck beside the boat.

This is probably sideways because the triangle is mean to be the boat image, but, as a former student of mine used to say whenever I asked him to edit some of his writing, "Whatever floats your boat, Miss."  I never corrected the Miss, but his writing unnerved me in its blatant disregard for logic.

This one is my favorite, and I finished it today, using cut up bits of what Fran calls "inventory," papers we had designed, painted, marked and decorated.  I even used a little textured tissue paper on this one, but Fran urged me not to rely on its seductive qualities as I had done in the piece above.

Finally, this morning I could stay only a short time but wanted to bang out one last piece, feeling that I had found my "voice" in this medium.

This too is small, but I just painted a squishy piece of Bristol board with orange poster paint and then used cut up pieces of my pages, some tissue paper for sails, etc...  They are, if nothing else, cheery and whimsical.  As far as I'm concerned, what's not to love in that?

Sacred Spaces

In the early, misty morning on Forbidden Drive, before the sun pierces the shadowy veil of the day to come, there is a palpable hush over the Wissahickon waters, and the fuzzy moisture of morning mist seems substantial enough to photograph, as indeed it was this morning when I walked at 6:45, along with bikers, runners and clusters of walking regulars. But then we are regulars after a few nods of recognition or quiet hellos.  This is the sacred time of day when the lights are still on along the drive, the path is still dark enough to feel spooky, and we early risers feel the anticipation of the coming day.

Today patches of brilliance spotted the landscape, beckoning with promises of regal fall foliage, and the big green and brown orbs from chestnut trees - at least I think they ar chestnuts - thudded mightily to the ground.  I wonder at the velocity of those hard nuts and whether one could strike me in the head and knock me down, but I put that thought in my basket of "why worries' and hustle along the path.  I don't see Larry and Dwight who are usually running together, Dwight preaching on one or another biblical topic, Larry sporting one of his latest shoe brands that will prevent any more injuries.  I grapple with hip injury and cannot run, but my walking is clipped, my pace fast.  Bill runs past me but stops to give a hug and say hello, a custom we learned from Vince, a former postman who used to run every morning.  He used to tell us all that running was not a job, and he urged us to stop and chat with each other along the way.

Then,one night Vince died in his sleep.  At his funeral all the Wissahickon running friends wore sneakers as a way to celebrate his life, and now there a bench with Vince's name and dates sits at the entrance to Forbidden Drive.

Last week was Bill's 80th birthday, and as I was walking he and about six other runners past me, heading down to Valley Green.  She I got there, others had gathered for a birthday celebration, and Sandy had made a delicious apple cake with apples from her farm, still warm from the oven.  I gently cradled my piece in my hand on the walk back so that I could have it do lunch.  With two masechtomies, Sandy is a runner's model, still racing - and winning - in her age group.  Bill used to run with Beau until Beau got very sick and could no longer run, bu there he was down there, celebrating Bill's birthday along with  his old buddies, chowing down on cake at 8:00 AM.  

This morning the light was patchy, but as I came out of the park onto my street, I noticed my neighbor's front door, bathed in the glow of early morning sun, two small pumpkins lined up for the Halloween carvings.  I wondered why there weren't three pumpkins because three young boys live there.  May I will go buy one more and just stick it there without telling them.

Life is good when you live in sacred spaces.

Finding art

"This is a beach stick I found at Christmas.  This morning I sanded it smoothly and propped it against a wall where it looks like a rather arrogant bird, at least to my eye.  I think he's rather grand.

At another angle, he is more subtle but there is movement and flow in this stick whether anybody but I see it or not.

I never really photographed this block of wood that had nails in it when I found it, and the nails hold the other stick right in place as though the two pieces we're meant to be together,  and I think they were.  They are wedged outside my front window for all to see. But most people just see beach junk.

Something just didn't feel right yesterday

Sure enough, the eruption of the turrialba volcano spewed ash all over the Central Valley, creating a crisis among the people living there who had to shuffle through the ash.  The wind was high, unusual for this part oc Costa Rica, and I kept breaking things or doing things wrong in the morning.  I planned to take my kayak down to the little cove just before Tarcoles, but the kayak kept tumbling over the side of the car, almost dragging along the highway.  After struggling to resettle and retie it several different times during my drive, I pulled over for one last MAJOR remount, and who should drive the other direction and pull over for me but Arlene and Greg.  He was able to fortify my efforts and get the thing on top of end car with some sturdiness; however, by the time I got down to the cove, I realized that the white caps on the water made kayaking even in this protected area a challenge.  I parked and watched the sea for a time and then turned right around and drove home, but not before an exploratory spin through Tarcoles, my favorite little fishing town along the coast.  I took a long dirt road down which nothing seemed to materialize but one low riding old mustang with flames painted on the sides and curved fins spouting out of the back.  The seats were very low, and the man driving was very dark with sunglasses.  He had a passenger, but they were driving so slowly that I could only imagine they were up to no good.  On the other hand, maybe they were just keeping the dust off the car because they tore past me once we got back onto the highway.  It was a peculiar encounter on a rather ominous day.

When I got the paper this morning, I realized that the earth had been emitting dangerous vibes, and if I head paid closer attention, perhaps I wouldn't have taken the trip.

Now my car sits, at the ready for another adventure, kayak tightly mounted atop the car, and in my little garden a prolific number of heliconias dot my hedges.  Life is good, as the Ticos say, and there are probably days when it is just best to sit tight.  Today may very well be one of those days!!

The first thing ....

As soon as I arrive, I drag these two chairs out from my little house and put them at the front door.  Every morning I fill the little glass bottle with flowers.  Yesterday it was an orchid and hibiscus, today it is some bougainvilla.  Mornings are gloriously filled with bird calls, critter noises, and sunshines Rays, all inviting me to play.  Because we are two hours ahead, I have been falling asleep before 8:30 but rising by 5:00.  The day is too much of a draw for me to miss a second of it.  

I found some teeny strawberries at the market yesterday for about $1.50 and had then with some guava and banana in my yogurt.  That and coffee, and I am set until lunch.  Off to explore the playa.

...and then there were blue skies and glistening sunlight

The morning machines have begun, but not before I got out to the meadow where the foot high snow drifts had settled, and the serenity and solitude of our shush through the pristine snow was sublime.  We went into the park past the barn, and then drifted along the creek past the geese swimming quickly in the water, stopping to admire the crested ice, the glimmering snow and frilly white branches.  Often up to his neck in snow, shadow bound over the mounds and scrabbled through the icy patches.

By 8:20 I had put on my skiis and shushed through the silence of s snowy wissahickon, gliding over the sparkling snow through the night skiers fracks, down to valley green and back without seeing a soul on the way out and encountering only three people on the way back.  I was relived not to have carried my phone camera, pushing myself to find the words in my head to defjnd and describe to nobody but myself the glisten of the snow, the brilliance of the sky, and the ruffle of the trees.  With nobody there, I had to make linguistic photos of the partially snow covered rocks in the creek, each looking like a skeleton, the still of the half Frozen wissahickon and the surge of water rumbling and tumbling down the dam at the red covered bridge.  Long icicles dangled from the valley green inn, but the tracks ended right there, so I headed back home, tightening the night people's tracks that had gotten furry since their inception the night before.  I was grateful for the solace and the solitude, the silence and the sparkle.  My day has been shaped by such splendor.

The last hurrah?

March 5, and even the snow flakes seem to float with the disinterest of  knowing the futility of clinging to anything - even winter.  They drift in the air, not seeming to care whether they make it down to the earth or not, indifferent and aimless in their last effort to rally themselves into an actual storm.  Shadow, on the other hand, is in his full element, relishing the cold, the snow and the jaunt.  He is so game every morning that I anticipate our walks with a kind of hungry curiosity about what we will witness, hear, or feel on our short trek around the back of the barn and up to Forbidden Drive.  Today the geese were taking flying landings into the rushing creek and then coasting along the tiny rapids that raced under branches, over rocks and along the center of the water; really, there was even white water, and geese and ducks were playing in the current as though they were skating, gleefully honking, quacking and shouting from their beaks and bills across the creek at each other as though it were some team sport.

I took some videos because the sound of the rushing stream and the squawking geese made so present the silence of the snow itself that I was breathless with the ruckus and at the same time able to  hear the softness in the edges surrounding the scuffle.  Even the street was draped in delicate calm once we tromped up the hill and out of the park, and home never beckoned more bountifully, the numbers on my sign hidden beneath the light blanket, the path strewn with a welcoming white, and dear Shadow,hesitant about coming inside, his own coat covered in a fluff of flakes.

And even more miraculous, The New York Times was waiting for me, wrapped in its little blue plastic bag.  The anticipation of a housebound day of almost sacred solitude excites and terrifies.

Falling in love with winter

I have trudged across the meadow every morning with my dog, this morning crunching over he crusty snow and ice, and I realized today that I adore the disruption that weather brings with it.  We are facing another snow storm with ice and snow beginning this afternoon, and as I watch and hear people readying themselves to be held hostage by weather, I am delighting in the whimsy and wonder of weather, something so other worldly, that can grip us and turn our lives upside down, just as they ought to be every so often.  It is the great equalizer, the grand mystery that shapes how we handle the priorities of our lives.  I love that part of weather.  It respects nothing and nobody and sometimes fools us and makes us realize how truly vulnerable and small we all are.

      Tomorrow Meals on Wheels is doubling up and delivering for Wednesday AND Thursday because of the storm alert for Thursday.  What an adventure!  Tonight I have invited four friends for dinner; two have already tried to cancel, but not a drop or a flake has yet to materialize.  I shall continue my preparations and know that if it gets bad, I shall drive my dinner party to both couples' houses instead of having them here.  It will be an adventure!  And now the calm before and perhaps in lieu of the storm.

Believe...

It is difficult to believe that it is March, and snow and ice have covered the ground, the trees and even the pine needles once again.  This relentless winter will be easy to let go as I can feel the temperature rise incrementally day by day.  These are not huge increases in warmth, but when the benchmark is feeling below zero, any little movement upward gives me faith.  This morning the heavy air is visible, a load of oxygen lying low above the snow, and the ice has some give although these photos do not suggest such give, but the promise of buds, of spring time life is in the air.

I am almost sad to leave at this point of promise because I know I will miss the first snowdrops peeping up through the snow, the yellow squeeze of daffodil buds and the open armed crocuses that greet and welcome the new season. We have had no entertainment with this weather; the snow was never fluffy or deep enough for cross country skiing, the ice was too prolific, and the beyond bitter cold prohibited much exercise outside but for the consistent street running, the only thing to keep us warm.

I know it is coming, but glory day, this is a long winter!

I can feel it.

While  it may be flinty and steely, the sun is shining in the morning despite temperatures in the single digits and wind chill that makes it feel as though it were WAY below zero.  The ice on the Wissahickon creek has not covered the top, and the insistence of the flow of water reminds me that life is still pulsing and throbbing just beneath the surface of our wintry cover.  Although the benches are still resting places only for snow, the warmth of the sun is palpable in the afternoons when it streams in my windows or when I am outside wrapped in its abundance.  

Spring is coming.  Just listen to the chilly chirps, the cracking ice, the trickling water.  There is s bubbling energy that hums beneath my feet as I shuffle over the frozen surface and through the crisp, dry snow.  There are muffled sounds that can only be harbingers of birdsong.  

Last night I had a dream about a rabbit who was way up in the branches of a frozen tree, and I could see him from my second story window; he was hanging by his ears and wiggling his nose at me as if to entice me with the living presence of his furry  being in a place above his terrestrial home, beckoning, beckoning to me, showing me that even he, this little wriggly fur ball, could clamber up into the safety of high places to promise the gentle sturdinessof the natural, living world.

I can wait.

Even quilts find the sunshine...

Sometimes we just have to make the light

It Will Come

Walking in the meadow yesterday reminded me of the dark ice of the winter soul.  The ground was tough with frozen soil, crusted snow, and slick ice.  Even my favorite bench looked foreboding and grim.  The geese had clearly been here during a softening of the soil, suggesting that they were hovering close by, awaiting the thaw and the Spring.  These are the signs that stimulate hope and suggest the possibility of warmth and the glimmer of sunshine.  And I have this hope.

Even though this morning when I walked Shadow in the meadow, I practically froze my fingers with temperatures down into single digits, I was heartened.  There it was.  The Sun.  The proof?

And this is the reflection on wood, but it glistens and shines with promise that is real.  I can wait.  Spring will come.