we have turned into my parents. on sundays, when we have no other plans, we take sunday drives. yes…we are those people…the ones who seemingly have no place to be and are wandering around the backroads in the countryside, breathing in deep breaths of freshly mowed grass and blowing kisses at horses out grazing.
WHITE SUN 18×48 mixed media
wisconsin countryside looks like this morsel AND it looks like the full painting of WHITE SUN. perfect fields manicured with crops and fences and dirt readied for fresh planting. gorgeous. there is a specific spot out-in-the-county…we drive past…and i wonder if this is the beautiful spot that david had in his mind when he was painting.
my big brother had a guitar in the olden days that i still pine for. it was just a folk guitar, but he had painted it and applied stickers and graffiti’ed all over it. one of my favorite sayings on this old guitar was “you are what you eat.” considering that was the 60s and 70s, and rice-a-roni and kraft macaroni and cheese and other fabulous packaged pre-prepared foods were a way-of-life, he was way before his time. now is a whole ‘nother story.
first following the whole30 precisely for the prescribed 30 days, we are over a year later still on a modified whole30 diet….not diet necessarily for weight (although middle age has changed the mighty metabolism) but diet for how we feel. one of the joys of our weeks is to go to jen and brad’s and have “potluck dinner” together. for two sets of people on distinct food diets, the fun of this is to bring all the leftovers you have and then just eat together. we drink wine and tell stories of the week. it’s total bliss! we have talked much about the way we are now eating…we are infinitely more aware of what we buy and how we prepare it.
but there are those moments….and thank goodness for google…when we look up images or tell stories of twinkies and hostess cupcakes and reggie bars and m&m peanut candies and good ‘n plenty and buddig meats and wonder bread chip sandwiches…and relive the good old days.
becky loves boards. snowboards, surfboards, skateboards. she is one of those people who can easily stand up and grab a wave or dominate a mountainside and make it all look easy. david’s drawing of a surfer makes me think of her.
but in more than one way. she and The Girl, just like us, really, are living a lifestyle that is uncertain. snowboard/ski/surf coaches and instructors, like artists, choose a life that doesn’t have guarantees…there are few financial aspects you can depend on with these callings and yet…the mountains call, the break of the wave calls, the canvas calls, the piano calls…and you know that, despite the risk and the worry and yes, the uncertainty, you are doing what you are supposed to be doing…people need what you are doing…you are THAT spoke on the wheel…and all will be well.
there are days i know my poppo is in the wind. i can feel him there. somehow he lets me know. it was six years ago today that he left this earth and, before he said goodbye, i made him promise to hang around. i told him i had no idea how i was going to adjust the timing on the ’71 bug without him, i wouldn’t be able to call him on the phone to ask him how to rube-goldberg a fix on something, i would be missing his “hi brat!”
with him in the wind and my sweet momma and my big brother and all the others who i miss, i have help from guardians. with everyone who is by my side on this beautiful planet, close or far away, i have help from champions. we each do.
we face into the wind, challenged by change and our ever-fluid lives. we put on our invisible capes, take a deep breath, hold onto each other. together we are superheroes.
there are those moments. the overwhelmed ones. when you feel like all is not going your way. those are the moments that this piece of music is about. as much as i’d like to think i always remember to 1. stop 2. take stock and 3. give thanks, i need a reminder from time to time. TAKING STOCK (listen below) from the album RIGHT NOW is all about remembering to have gratitude, for where i am, any second of any hour of any day of any year of any time….
we look at the news app often these days. it’s kind of like we don’t want to miss anything. so much seems to teeter on the edge it makes us feel we need to stay apprised. the news is scattered all over: places in the world suffering, places in the world ravaged by war, places in the world devastated by natural causes, places in the world with people who do not have good intentions and countries divided by selfish, self-righteous motives.
david’s painting EARTH INTERRUPTED VI: NEWS.WORTHY. makes me feel like i am looking at the earth with the earth (the blue of sea, the green of land) in the background, a kind of three-dimensional surreal view of our mother planet.
i chose this morsel SCATTERED NEWS because the play between the blackness and the newsprint intrigued me. it reminded me that, despite the news app and the paper and the reports on tv, we are only hearing bits of news. there is so much more happening each and every day that doesn’t make it to us, that we don’t know. there is so much more impacting people all over our world. the thing is, we are all in this world together. like the pastor (bishop michael curry) who preached for the royal wedding said just a few days ago, imagine how the world would be if love were the way: “when love is the way, the earth will be a sanctuary.” we may be scattered, but people are people. we all breathe in and out the same way. and we could all stand to remember that.
ah. “a sanctuary.” so if we step outside the world and look back, perhaps the scattered bits of news would all be stories of “a new world”.
i have literally sat across the restaurant table (or the kitchen table or the living room or or or) from him, on date night or any other night or morning or day, staring at his face, thinking, “geeeeeeez. you are DEFINITELY an acquired taste!” but then, a few moments (ok, or longer) go by and love swirls around me and i like him again.
i KNOW you have been there…whether on a date or with your significant other…the times you think “whattheheck??!!??” thank goodness that is balanced out with “you are totally my type!!!” or there would be NO relationships in the world.
i’m guessing he thinks that about me too (but only RARELY. lol.)
the moment i saw this trailmarker it made me laugh. i was feeling exactlyyy this way, so this lightened my mood. (yes, yes, i understand that the marker made sense, but if you flatten it out (as opposed to three-dimensional) it is admittedly funny and a little confusing.)
middle age (ohmygosh, yes, middle age) seems like a time of arrows every which way. where we’ve been, where we are, where we are going…these questions are all different now…different from the striding times even a decade ago. time is starting to mean something else; i recognize the scarcity of time-limitlessness.
i lost one of my very best friends from elementary school, junior high and high school last week. kenny was brilliant and funny and courageous and a really good person. together with his twin richard and i, we were often thought of as “triplets” in school, mostly because we were all platinum blond kids growing up. i haven’t seen kenny for many years. the last time i can remember was having coffee with him at the atlanta airport; he was an airline captain and based there so we met when i flew through with a tad bit of a layover. he was thrilled to catch me up about his beautiful wife and son and he joked about how long it took him to find her. even though i saw him rarely, there was something about knowing he was in the world that was comforting…a piece of my long-ago-past that i could still talk to or text with, maybe see from time to time, who knew me when i was little, when i was a preteen, when i was a teenager, when i loved calculus. i tried to explain this to d…when certain people who connect me way back to my roots are no longer present on this earth, it is as if i can feel the earth tilt on its axis; it wobbles. and nothing will ever be the same. i can’t get to ken’s service, but i hope to carry with me – always – a piece of kenny and our growing-up history. i hope to honor him somehow.
and the next time i wonder “which way” in angst, i hope to stand still, right where i am. time is not unlimited. i don’t want to waste it.
dogdog doesn’t like the rain much. he pretty much avoids the puddles in the backyard…that is, until one neighbor or the other lets their dogs out. then? then he doesn’t care; all inhibitions are off and he runs like a maniac, his long aussie hair first flying, then clumping and muddy, joy joy joy on his face.
that’s probably a good lesson for all of us…inhibitions off and joy joy joy. despite the messy puddles and the bad hair day. my sweet momma used to sign off her letters with “enjoy, enjoy!” yes. enjoy, enjoy.
one of my treasured concert memories is a concert where The Boy played with me. i loved all the laughter leading up to it as he wailed on his tenor in my studio. we had so much fun. this song LET ME TAKE YOU BACK (listen below) makes me think of him. originally a solo piano piece and the title track for a pair of albums LET ME TAKE YOU BACK Volumes 1 & 2 (my solo piano arrangements of 60’s and 70’s songs), the infamous ken orchestrated it for the album AS IT IS with saxophone and thereafter, in live performance, it belonged to craig. let me take you back totally takes me back to those days.
have a cup of coffee (or, if it is later in the day, a glass of wine) and sit back with me. and, since the LET ME TAKE YOU BACK albums are no longer available, maybe dig out your old 45’s of john denver, dan fogelberg, pete seeger, gordon lightfoot, bread, bob dylan, loggins and messina, jim croce, carole king, joni mitchell, carly simon…well, you get the picture…and play them on a record player.
david’s painting EARTH INTERRUPTED VI: NEWS.WORTHY.
reverse threading 