A Thing of Beauty, This World

Yesterday was Thanksgiving.  First on my "to do!" list was a trip with dogs out to The Lake.  Rain-sign everywhere, from the gray sky to rivulet-trails down the road and beach.  Emerson has mentioned recently that he'd be happy if we were to move out there, so he could swim all day, every day.  Luna says yeah, she'd go for that too.  The Lake is full of coots, those little black water fowl with white frontal shields on their heads.  They swim together, looking ahead or to the side in unison, so it looks as though the water is sparkling as they move en masse away from the black Labrador head slicing a V through the deep turquoise water.  Someday(!) I will get a photo!  When Coots have had enough of this entertainment, they take off, and run on the surface of the water, just out of reach where they settle down again.

Currently I am in love with Spanish Moss and the Oaks.  Together they define aesthetic for me, with hue, value, composition, and beauty in perfect balance.  Spanish Moss is not one plant or animal.  It is a lichen.  Hehehee!  And now that I look it up, I find that this is not Spanish Moss at all, but Usnea!  Well, hay; live and learn is one of my many mottoes.  Usnea is very strong medicine.  Should you find yourself out there, with a surface wound, wad up a handful of this and put it over the problem.  It helps it to heal and sterilizes the area.

I love how it comes alive when the rain soaks it through.  Its color enlivens and it seems to grow longer.    Just read that the longer length it grows indicates less pollution in the air!

Ok.  Enough of the book-learnin'.  I just love the stuff.  It is appearing in my paintings, both in the ground gesso, and the composition.  I am inspired by its color, the way it hangs or drapes over branches.  How when the trees lose their leaves the usnea glows.  I love the Life of it.  It feels as though it loves me, too.

I am Gallery sitting this morning.  Spending time with incredible art is healing and inspirational.  Hopefully patrons will flood the premises!  Yes.  Good.

This amazing ceramic piece is one of our guest artists, Jane Gardner's, work.  Jane's ceramics reflect her deep connection with the earth and sea.  She has developed her glazes to high art: using them as painterly, as surface treatment and as an extension of the clay body.

Kayla Esmond and Michael Smirnov create amazing birdhouse-sculptures from every imaginable found-object, plus a few that are constructed from antique wire, insulators, light bulbs.  This is just a small detail of the top of one, but I love it so much in front of my painting.  "Something magical is happening in this corner," one visitor told me.  Yes.

This morning, on FB, I listed the names of my 7 children.  What a beautiful experience!  For me, writing, printing, typing, drawing, even painting the letters, is such a heart-connection.  Kids may not fully realize until they have their own, of course, just how much they are revered, how they are studied, memorized, adored, petted, yes and worried-over.  Of course I am grateful for them in my life, but it is so much more.  I do not think that grateful is a big enough word!  Now, they have spouses and children, and are each involved in their own full lives.  My memories and love continue as my experience.

These are the layers of Life.  These are the layers of my art.

Thank you for reading/listening.  I love you!  xoxoLPC

Calm. Peaceful.

Calm.  Peaceful.  Birds singing (those little grey ones).  Sunlight splashing around.

I am catching up on a tiny few housekeeping chores.  Letting the calm wash over me.

They say a storm is making its way towards our area.  The first one of the Season, three weeks earlier than usual.  Of course, we know, usual has gone the way of normal.  Doesn't seem to carry much weight.

Harvest (grapes) is in full, frenetic swing.  The weekend has enough venues piled high to exhaust even the hard-core attendees.  I believe I am going to prepare the winter bed for greens and cabbage.

Dirt is very soothing.

Love you.

xoxoLPC

I love you, regardless.

What a summer this has been.  Maybe not so different from any other, yet increasingly, I feel time whizzing by me as though I missed the jet-stream.  The wave of life curls over me, thrashes me, rolls me up on to the beach frazzled, dizzy, and bedazzled by the momentum.  (Yeah, I just couldn't resist all those Zs.)

To begin, I wonder how my little Rebekah (#1 Granddaughter) all of a sudden is looking over the top of my head.  Yes, I could become maudlin over this feat, which took her a mere 13 years to accomplish.  Her baby sister, Mary, is 10.  I am beginning to feel that this is unfair.

Pour another cup of coffee.  Add a slip of cream.  Sip.

No.  A life rich with all of this is not unfair.  Cannot be measured in dollars, or even in time.  Perhaps this is from whence the word "immeasurable" springs.

I have been contemplating what freedom means to me.  This morning a crisp breeze blew through the fig tree in the back yard.  The sun was not over the ridge yet, the figs looked like black dots.  I drew water for the coffee, my thoughts trailed off towards a maze of "what ifs."  Mind does that, you know. Just takes off without consideration of peace-of-mind, or belief, or faith.  Increasingly, it is all up to me to reign in unruly mind with a firm hand.  Bring it back to this moment.  The clear water streaming into the pot, circling the bottom, churning up in the center.  Fresh.  Clear.

If I were one of the thousands of women in jail, I would not be standing here at a kitchen window, contemplating freedom, or the slow dawn illuminating black figs dancing with the breeze.

It is easy for me to understand ways of animals, migrations, radish seeds.  I am able to start a painting with little regard for where it may take me; curiosity compels me to stay with it through the whole process.  Human behavior, on the other hand, is a complete mystery, and not altogether a pleasant one.

I am warming up.  I haven't written for too long.  I feel a little rusty, creaky, shy.  How do writers just burst out with truth and honesty?  How do you say I love you and have it mean anything?

What exactly do I want it to mean, I love you?  I want safety, kindness, consideration, something secure, something I can count on.  And I think I want that for you, too.  When I say I love you, I am believing on some level that you are agreeing with me, and knowing what I am thinking/feeling/believing.  And this is where things start to fall apart.  Of course.  For starters, you may be thinking/etc a whole lot of other things; like how to get more, or mine, or theirs.

 Many insects and animals live in colonies, or hives, or nests, and work together collectively.  Their common purpose is survival.  We judge them as simple, complex, whatever.  We think we are the smart ones, the ones with God, enlightenment, we can read and drive cars.  We are the ones.  Special.

Cooperation.  Collaboration.
Mmmmm.  I am getting warmed-up.
xoxoLPC

Fire Season Warm-up

Having a nice, relaxing morning this week past,  I was distracted by the unmistakable "bonk bonk bonk" of the helicopter blades chopping through the clear sky.  Looking out my front window I saw blue smoke rising from the pine and oak covered hill north of us.

So of course, I grabbed my camera, and oh yeah!  My shoes. And out I went.  I blame my son-in-law for this kind of behavior.  Never in my wildest dreams would I have "chased a fire" before I knew him.

The connection being that he is a volunteer fire fighter, so now and then I have to run down a fire or two, just to be in conversation with him.  This can keep us out of politics for a few moments.  Out of hot water, so to speak.  In the frying pan, rather than jumping out into the fire.

The helicopter was flapping and dipping its bucket into the river and bringing it back and dumping it on the fire on the hill.  I scooted through the vineyards for a closer shot, and the 'copter started dumping water to create its own landing place.  You can see that the fire is mostly out.

This is Thomas.  His 6th birthday Pirate Treasure Hunt, and he is directing & figuring things out.  He is remarkably similar to his firefighter dad and his Uncle Skyler, replete with rosy sweaty cheeks and all-business approach to finding treasure.

Anyways, it was fun to watch.  

And then, it landed.  As though it settled into the vineyard.  Look at the cloud of dust!

My daughter Sarah scolded me for "chasing" after the fire fighters.  She worries about my getting in the way.  Well, I am here to tell you that I stay clear of the likes of these.  Serious:  I do not really chase fires.  If they are in my front yard, or the next-door vineyard, I do have to go out and get my scoop, it's only natural.  I have to plan my next step, you know.  Steps, if I have to get out of Dodge.

So, since it is Sept 12, 2011, and I have these photos up, I will say that I appreciate these men.  They are hard working, well trained teams.  They fly into rough terrain and get out and put their own life on the line.  We all expect them to show up when we "need" them to do so, and most often they do.  We expect miracles, and they usually deliver.  It is important to remember the men and women who have served and do serve their communities and country as fire fighters, ambulance drivers, helicopter pilots, fire bomber pilots, truck drivers, ditch diggers, water haulers.  It's a long list which I cannot even complete, but I am grateful for each and every one of them.

Miracles.

xoxoLPC

Busy Moon and Stuff

True, she says, I have not even looked at my blog for too long.  Maybe she doesn't even know me anymore.

So much has gone on, and now Queen Summer subsides; the nights are longer, dawn comes later.  I am waking up to the dark.  How can this be?  I have yet to jump in the river, it's not been warm enough.  My heirloom tomatoes are just 'coming on', the pumpkins gave up, as did the Butternut squash.  An odd gardening year, for sure.

The Moon Is Also Busy

I bow to God in gratitude,

And I find the moon is also busy

Doing the same.

I bow to God in great happiness,

And I learn from where the suns

And the children

And my heart

All borrow their Light.

I bow to the Friend in deep reverence

And discover a marvelous secret carried in the air:

This whole Universe is just as blessed

And divinely crazed as I,

And just as lost in the Wonderful Holy Dance.

My dear,

After such a long, long journey,

God has mad another soul

Free!

Now all Hafiz wants to do

Is open a beautiful Tavern

Where this Sacred Wine

Of God's Truth, Knowledge and Love

Is forever and ever

Freely offered to you.

O bow to God in gratitude,

And some day

You will see how

The moon is also busy doing the same.

***

Hafiz

My paintings.  My friend, Hafiz wrote the poem, his friend, Daniel Ladinsky translated.

Yes, let us do this again, soon.  Fun!

Love you.

xoxoLPC

I Love Eagles.

Approaching the Summer Bridge,  I scan the sky, the water, the gravel bar, and back to the sky.  A large silhouette lumbers up river, towards me.  I glance back at the road, then raise my eyes to what I was really hoping for: osprey?  No, way bigger.  Can it be the Bald Eagle?  By now I am on the wrong side of the dirt road, my vehicle aimed at the gravel berm, and I notice that there is a car behind me.  Yes, kind of on my bumper.  So I drive like I know how, find a place to legitimately pull over, flip a U and go back, park where it says not to, and dig the camera out of the basket.  I get out, use the steel gate as a tripod and take a few photos, none of which, when I upload them, are clear.  But I don't care.

This is the first time that I have had my camera within reach when I've seen the Eagles.  They take my breath away.  Give me hope.

Once, out at the Lake, we were returning from an exhausting paddle, having gone too far and the wind had come up to make it even harder.  I was grumbling along behind Wayne, wishing I had such long arms and strong biceps as him, so I could paddle better and be ahead, when a motion just above my head drew my attention upward.  There, going in the same direction as us (into the wind), a Bald Eagle so close that I could see its feathers, its yellow eye, its amazing beak.  It seemed to hang a bit with us, then with powerful strokes, left us to our slow-going struggle:  Land Lubbers.

I have been watching, on a daily basis, a live-stream web cam that is set up in a nest north of Vancouver Island.  For instance, it is raining there today, and the eaglets (there are two) are a little wet and bedraggled.  The amazing journey of these magnificent birds is awe inspiring.  The eaglets' antics seem so endearing, and I admittedly make everything kind of pet-like.  They are not pets.  They are a species on the edge of survival, as the resources upon which they depend are in peril.  Humans are really messing up, destroying the environment with horrifying efficiency.  It is a major miracle that this eagle family is still intact, that the youngsters are this far along.

I keep my eye on them all day (when I am home), check on them when I hear them screeching, because I know now what it sounds like when the parents are zooming in.  The man who runs the web cam is a sage in the Eagle world, but I can only imagine his heavy heart in watching the environmental destruction unraveling the ecosystem around him.  I feel it too.

Eagles at Hornby Island

Despair is not my job.  I admit that I am often unsure what in the hell to do.  Yes:  Prayer leads me, most often into this place of not knowing what to do:  I seem so powerless.

So here is what I did today, and my heart opened, lifted.   I tuned in to the Eagle Cam.  I laughed at their antics, their wild flapping and hopping.  I watched them watch for their parent, craning their heads in unison, keeping their eye on Mom when she lands in the branches above them.  I watched them shake water off themselves.  I let myself meld into their rhythm, slow down.  I allow time to stop, allow Eagle essence into my consciousness, just for a moment.  And it starts to happen:  I can feel the wet air, the gray sky down to the water, water everywhere dripping from the giant mother tree.  I hear the Raven.  The Eagles know.  To be Eagle, do what eagles do, teach the eagle way to the youngsters.  Know that all is well.

Thank goodness.  That's all I've got to say about that.

xoxoLPC

Luna at the Lake

Title:  At the Lake Not Listening to Mom for the Moment

Of course, she does change course, make a big loop, and come back to the point, er, the sit.  Ms. Luna is 4 &1/2 years old, and this posting is a celebration of her.

Look closely, and you see the green of the tennis ball, fragmented by the experience of being thrown into the brink.  Well, little ball, you ain't seen nuthin yet.

Can all hell break loose in the water?  Probably, if one considers Great White Shark.

Great Speckled Luna.

How blessed I am to have a Luna friend.  She is thriving with her regime of raw food, leash-walks, occasional rides in the car, controlled trips to the Lake.  She loves her "kids," doesn't pay much mind to any others.  She and I both are recovering from the deep winter traumatic experience.  I have found much comfort in Trish and Lisa's instructions: protect her.  In a profound way, I was given permission to take care of her, to make decisions about her, to take control.

Keeping Watch

In the morning

When I began to wake,

It happened again--

That feeling

That You, Beloved,

Had stood over me all night

Keeping watch,

That feeling

That as soon as I began to stir

You put Your lips on my forehead

And lit a holy Lamp

Inside my heart.

***

Hafiz

***

And, for this I am very very grateful

xoxoLC