The arc of a life is the rational part.
We have the proof of our eyes of the shape of who you are.
We are excited by the rainbow’s colors,
by it’s obviousness.
It’s just a trick of the light,
a coincidence of sunshine and water and eyes.
It is the light unseen,
in life and in words,
that is only felt, innocent of proof:
a coincidence of passion and love and honesty.
Today was a dream come true–a cruise on Glacier Bay. I felt awash in joy all the way out, but the moment we turned around at Pacific Glacier, I felt an unmeasurable sorrow.
I am nearly exhausted emotion, overwhelmed by the majesty and complexity of the mountains and deeply sad as we leave them behind.
I want to stand up on the ship and yell, “Stop! Stop!” It’s crazy to leave such beauty behind. I want to stay here, to explore every valley and mountain until are so much a part of me there is no possibility of losing them when I depart.
There is as much to know and learn and see here as a man could wrestle with in a lifetime.
Addendum, March 6, 2013: Where did the glaciers go? Some research.
What a mundane subject, but I like this one. A sun hat; I can feel the sun on it, I can feel how cool it is to wear.
An old straw hat as a still life study.
A friend from Compuserve noted that this drawing reminded her of a the hat in The Little Prince that was really a picture of a boa constrictor eating an elephant. Which brought up a little story in my head, which goes like this:
If my drawing were NOT a drawing of a hat, it would be a drawing of a rope that woke up one day, and decided to disguise itself as a hat so that it could get into the closet at the front of the house to meet with its girlfriend, the saucy red and pink umbrella. Sadly, umbrella-girl was foolish and pretentious, and did not appreciate the love of the rope (a poor, twine rope, as strong as steel (well, almost) and with a heart of pure cotton love. Sigh. That’s how it goes, sometimes. The rope eventually stopped looking like a hat, and the umbrella grew old and lonely, and there came a time when all she had of the rope was this picture, which always made her sad, because, well, she could have lived a different life had she known what really mattered.
A charcoal drawing from the 80s, a favorite medium of mine at the time. I can almost, but not quite, recall who this is! That’s what I get for moving around so much. This was in Alaska. I liked charcoal because it invited spontaneity, and it could be bold or gentle. Great medium.
Looking over the old drawings, I recall why I quit drawing (for decades!). I felt that I just couldn’t do it very well. (And the same was true about my writing; I judged that in far too harsh a light as well.) Those were my judgments at the time, and they came out of all sorts of insecurities. Now, I’m much more sanguine about art and creativity. Or, to put it another way: I’m strange, and it’s fun.
A drawing from my time in Alaska, in the 1980s.
I was digging around in a closet today, and I found a plastic bin with drawings of mine from 10, 20, even 30 years ago. I found this drawing which struck me in particular; it’s a sweet rendering and I am really enjoying it.
A drawing I did, oh, maybe 25 years ago.
Creation is a funny thing, but what I am finding is important is that being ‘picked up’ for what you do, in whatever medium, is actually just a small part of it. (And let’s not get into how the commercial side gets messed up with people who make things that appeal, rather than creating true stuff.)
The most satisfying thing I can do as an artist (in writing, drawing, music, eidetic images before I fall asleep, day dreaming, conversations, etc.) is to just create; creation is not just its own reward; it has a life of its own, very non-objective, as magical as you are willing to risk for.When I was younger, I compared that feeling to riding an untamable horse; now that I’m 60, I find that the feeling of creation is more like a day job where you get on a bus to what might be hell, or an assembly line, rock-breaking, sexy, or some place never seen/lived before.
Wherever you go, if you are an artist, you live there like a native, and you get what you get, and the glory is more in the seeing than in the transposing. Art is really about the ability to be stupid and naked and brilliant in public, with the confidence of a brat and the vulnerability of utter loss–those places you reach for desperately, but cannot grasp. Yet.
“…or, …”
The Pusher
Two AM on a Saturday morning. Nobody noticed that both the time machine and the quantum transporter were both left on. The janitor was finishing up in the lab–a new gal, nobody told her to leave the lab alone. But she was drawn to it–the candy wrappers, potato chip bags, and pop bottles taunted her sense of rightness and world order.
And then she saw the floor: no one had cleaned up the dinosaur poop from the Friday run. So she set to it with a mop.
And of course she bumped the time machine, and a TV from the late 1980s (BC, before the Crystalization) popped onto tray #7, not more than an inch and a half away from the transporter booth. She went at the cleanup with mad passion: swinging that mop, rinsing that dino poo into the bucket (it’s a shame the University never sprung for a Zapper, but even in 2732, human labor is still often cheaper than robots), whacking the mop handle against the machinery without a care for what it might mean.
That was how a Gleanarian wound up in the transporter booth, diverted from his expected therapy session. How was he to know? In an attempt to work out his anger at the enslavement of his people in the summer of 1968 (BC), he attacked the TV and pushed it off the try just nanoseconds before it had cut clean from the time threads.
The universe was titled by 16.813 degrees as a result–not that anyone noticed until Tuesday, due to the gravity holiday. It was fixed sometime on Wednesday, but since there was no snapshot before the tilt, no one knows how far off the universe is–well, not beyond seven decimal points. Which mostly doesn’t matter, except the odds were altered a bit for poker, and scoring is down in the NBA across the board.
A University committee has been appointed to look into the matter.
I want to meet this guy when I travel to his planet.
