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Tag Archives: imagination


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guttah. [kerri’s blog on d.r. thursday]

his name is guttah. he stands right off our deck, just yards away from the back door and the gutter overhead that started to ice-dam in perfect ice-damming conditions which necessitated use of the snow rake that pulled all the snow off the sunroom roof onto the deck and subsequently down onto the patio where it piled up and invited guttah to come to life. and so, there he is.

he looks a little stunned and i’m guessing he is. suddenly, he came out of d’s imagination and into the snow. suddenly, he got eyes of coal and sticks for a nose and mouth and arms and ornamental grass hair. suddenly, he is. pretty existential stuff.

we don’t know where guttah was before this. zooming around the universe in some jet stream, looking for a place to self-actualize, perhaps. we do know that his arrival prompted dogga to sniff and wonder. so that, in turn, has me wondering.

what does guttah see – here in this world of packed snow? what does guttah ponder as he stands there, looking a bit astounded? is he searching for meaning, for balance or healing in what he could see as he zoomed from non-existence into existence? or is he desperately looking for a way back to wherever he came from?

if i were a snowbeing that just arrived from the galaxy of ice crystals and snowflakes, i most certainly would be questioning the intention of bringing me to life. particularly right now.

but after perusing the contemporaneous news of my newfound home, after looking around, grokking all that is happening, i would be certain of the reason.

for i would recognize that my very existence had brought about a bit of giddiness, a little bit of laughter, many smiles, conversation, a fun photo shoot. my existence had made the day of ice-damming, another day of negative-news, the coming polar freeze just a bit easier.

and for that, i would stand in anyone’s yard, off their deck, on their patio or in their grass.

guttah will likely be around for a bit of time. windchills are going to be below zero for a few days, at least.

i have to say, he is a pretty adorable addition to the fam.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this D.R. THURSDAY

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a feather in the sky. [kerri’s blog on two artists tuesday]

though there was a feather in the sky

and i collect feathers

i had to leave it there – in the blue

to let it float

and land in someone else’s sunglasses

though there was a feather in the sky

and it granted me a wish

i do not know if it will be granted

before the wind carries it off

a wispy cirrus genie

though there was a feather in the sky

it is elusive and evanescent

i saw it – which made it real

but its fleeting quills were bending as i watched

and i saw all of its life pass by

as the feather lost its shape

and could no longer be a feather

for its soul was becoming the next thing

the wind morphing it, streams of vapor swirling

into perhaps a mountain or a unicorn

or something flat like a fallowed meadow

before it explodes into flowers

and then, no one will know that it was a feather

except i will

and now you

and so it counts

though there was a feather in the sky

and i collect feathers

i had to leave it there – in the blue

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY

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the past, the present, the future. [kerri’s blog on not-so-flawed wednesday]

our daughter wrote, “it’s a hidden gem!” and i agree. we were grateful for her encouraging us to adventure here.

one of my favorite places, goblin valley state park in utah was a playground like no other. two artists – with active imaginations – we could have stayed there all day. this place – full of hoodoos and really interesting sandstone/siltstone formations engaged us, made us giggle, invited us to run about in delight, insisted we play.

we were invigorated – even in intense heat and unforgiving sun. even as we were there – even before we had to leave – we talked about coming back, to be with these sprites, enchanting stone babies.

we traveled to many national parks in our nine days all together. though we would hike to take photographs and explore sites a bit, our inclination to hike the narrows at zion remains a wish for another day, trails at bryce remain unseen. the hike right up to delicate arch at arches will have to wait and an attempt at crossing the grand canyon – rim to rim – or even riding down into the canyon didn’t make the cut – this time.

but goblin valley was another story. and the absolute charm of these goblins tugged at us – taunting us and enchanting us.

i sat down on one of these sandstone sculptures, tucked into its graceful shape – mystified by the sheer beauty of the valley. once again, i was but a tiny being, part of a much bigger whole.

this time – this time – i was touching the past, the present and the future…a sandstone deposit from 170 million years ago…this very day…and these magical hoodoos which would prevail long after i am gone.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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the face on the door. [kerri’s blog on not-so-flawed wednesday]

we are clearly the three musketeers together…20, d and me.

our discussions range from ridiculous kidding to profound artistic center to current events. we cook together and spoil dogdog together. he has been a constant – for thirty years – and our friendship is cherished. he is my brother; after my own big brother was on the other side, he chose 20 to be so.

he has a thing about faces. and so, because he sees them everywhere, so do we. happy faces, silly faces, sad faces, worried faces, upside down faces. i have stopped in my tracks to snap a photo of a face – regardless of the place – just to send to him.

and then, at the coffeehouse in madison, there was this face on the door. 😐 d was engrossed in something else, but 20 and i went off into fits of laughter – talking as if we were the face on the door. it doesn’t take much to entertain us.

it’s a good learning.

because – really – isn’t that the point? to see the tiniest thing with someone you care about and laugh the biggest guffawing-snorting-tears-running laugh. to admire the tiniest thing with someone you care about and be awestruck with the biggest swelling heart. to share the tiniest things – and the biggest things – with someone you care about and know – deep in your soul – they are standing there with you, every fiber.

i’ll always stop for faces now.

well, faces and hearts.

because they’re important. 🙂

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this NOT-SO-FLAWED WEDNESDAY

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the pony. [k.s. friday]

and – up close – if you choose – you will see the foreleg of a winter-dressed pony, the extra cold-weather-coat trapping hair next to the skin of the horse, keeping him warmer. he is stopped, gazing at the distant field, ready to canter into it, the exploding of freedom of movement.

and you blink and it is a cattail. one of many in the field, waiting in the marsh through autumn and winter for early spring. as many as 250,000 seeds, white fluff sailing and transported by birds and breezes. and the life cycle continues.

it is winter in my studio. the rhizomes are gathering underground, together with the cattails. maybe around the spring equinox, maybe a bit later, the shoots will rise out of the ground – like a phoenix out of ashes – and new sprouts will grow and grow. the cycle germinates and pollinates and seeds will fly again. the birds and the wind and i will play for you – seeds and notes flying.

in the meanwhile, i wear my winter coat. it is keeping the heat in. it protects me. insulation for shelter in this long and cold winter, to shield in the storms, to brace in this fallow.

but soon, soon, with the sun and fresh air, the pony will run free.

*****

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read DAVID’S thoughts this K.S. FRIDAY


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beyond the edge. [d.r. thursday]

this installation was beautiful. stunning. olafur eliasson’s rainbow bridge was in a room full of light and the spectrum of color was immediately striking. and then, we walked into the room further and all the color disappeared, instead spheres of glass reflected the windows and the water outside the museum. “the appearance of the spheres is unstable, slipping between clarity, colour, and blackness in response to the slightest movement of the viewer.” (olafur) if you stand right in front of one of the twelve spheres, you can see your reflection upside down, teasing you to make faces and play. we could have visited with this piece all day – moving around the room, standing still, watching the light waltz and dip as the hours wore on.

“its [the extraordinary] concern is the edge, and the making of a form out of the formlessness that is beyond the edge.” (mary oliver- upstream)

and so, when we finally moved on, past the sunlit rainbow, i’m quite sure we were both in that dreamy place – the place where you linger in all the vast possibilities that are out there – combinations of color and sound, notes joining together, brushes brushing, harmonics floating above you and bass notes stabilizing your foothold. it is a place of creation, where you feel the tendrils of ideas, of paintings, of songs, of melodies of piano, of sweeping strings and mournful french horns, of spattered acrylic, of photographs with intense depth of field. it is the place we visit on the trail, on the mountains, on the seashore, in our studios. it is beyond the edges of billpaying folders and mortgages, student loans and job searches. it flies past all the details of everyday mundane. it is nebulous and it is visceral.

we moved out of the room – newly equipped with dream – refreshed because someone else had “put it out there”. someone else – also – had vision and the impulse to express it. someone else – also – had stood for long hours, sat for long hours, pondered for long hours in front of canvas or a piano or on a wooden dance floor or waiting for the perfect snapshot. someone else had composed – the extraordinary – from out beyond the edge. and its whisperings fell on our ears, encouraging our response to it and reminding us to jump.

*****

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earth interrupted VI

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rooting for midwest express. [two artists tuesday]

it’s exactly how i draw horses. back in the day i had a book that taught me how to draw them. i was horse-crazy and i studied this book and practiced over and over. i did not retain much of all that study – or all of the other books i read about horses – but i can still draw a horsehead. so when we flew over this island on our approach to the tampa airport, i was astounded to see the first vestiges of my own drawing. i named it van gogh horse – for obvious reasons. high tide and angle and an active imagination helped, but i sure do think it looks like a horse.

it had been three and a half years since i had flown. we’ve read many articles about aggressive passengers and, i must admit, that doesn’t sound too enticing. i can’t imagine being rude to people who are tending to your needs as you zoom through the sky. not to mention all that recirculated air and the folks in the seat behind us hack-coughing. ahem. so it was a little nerve-wracking.

but it was also magical. you forget. i spent a lot of time looking out the window, mesmerized by the cloud formations and the landscape below, checking the flight plan on my phone to see where we were (technology is pretty amazing!) and taking photographs. i looked – i am sure – like the quintessential tourist-on-the-airplane. but i didn’t care. we have driven everywhere in the last years so it was like a small miracle to jaunt from milwaukee to tampa in two hours and forty minutes.

i remember days i flew often. midwest express airlines and real plates and real silverware and gourmet meals and mimosas in the morning or wine in the afternoon. and, the pièce de résistance…warm chocolate chip cookies. it was an experience – a whole experience. i flew midwest as often as i could, flights to los angeles and nashville and south and out east.

the most memorable experience was the – only – one time the airline lost my luggage. i had concerts and appearances in boston and all my attire was in my suitcase. a midwest express representative – jimbo – who is still my friend on facebook – immediately set to helping me, told me to go buy some necessities, including concert attire, and send midwest the bill. i am mostly a jeans-wearing performer – though there were some exceptions that particular trip – so that kept the costs down a bit, but they covered every last thing i needed. customer service at its best. i called all those items “my midwest express collection” and flew midwest loyally until the airline was no longer.

in a memory-filled moment with the smell of baking chocolate chips in my mind’s eye, i googled the milwaukee-based airline and was jazzed to see it is hoping to make a comeback one of these days. i wish them well. here is the best news:

“the airline plans to bring back the cookies if it starts flying again.” (milwaukeemag.com)

i know that can take some time and some luck. but warm chocolate chip cookies fresh out of the airline’s tiny kitchen could encourage me to start flying more again. i mean, people can’t be ornery with cookies.

if i had to draw an airplane experience – even though i am clearly not gifted at drawing – i would draw people in cushy two-across-seats, trays down, real plates and silverware, coffee cups and mimosas, warm chocolate chip cookies, linen napkins. smiles and horses out the window.

i am rooting for midwest express.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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the splurge. [two artists tuesday]

it would appear that a giant angel was hula-hooping in the clouds and dropped their hula hoop, which landed in the upper branches of a tree at the botanic garden. or, perhaps, that a spaceship -with no defined interior- had dropped down for a visit. or, maybe, there was a filming of sesame street’s “the letter ‘o'” about to do another take. brightly lit hula hoops of neon light suspended in trees, they cast an eerie glow onto the frozen ground, onto the path. michael bublé sang “walking in a winter wonderland” and we found ourselves inside the magic.

there is definitely something to wandering paths amongst many other people all oohing and ahhing. i had vowed to myself to leave my camera in my purse, but it wasn’t minutes before i failed at this. there were just so many colors and textures to remember, so dreamy. vast installations of creative lighting.

we had hoped to go. the ticket cost was a little prohibitive but we decided – when we woke and new year’s day was to be a little more mild than it had been – to splurge.

we were stunned even at the entrance to the garden, the trees wrapped in lights, every single branch and twig gleaming. we moseyed along the path, pulling over to let groups of people by so that we could be somewhat alone as we strolled.

but this wasn’t a silent and solitary hike in the woods. it was a performance piece we all took in together. each person’s glee added to ours and, dropping all expectations and all analysis of how-do-they-do-that, we were caught up in the captivating displays.

we already have a plan for next year. there are snacks and beverages and fire pits, places to linger, places to immerse. i could stand and watch the water and light “all i want for christmas” over and over and over. i allowed myself to wonder what a garden would look like lit to a piece of my own music.

we talked about our favorite displays driving the backroads. though spaceship fantasies are not my thing, hula hoops definitely are in my wheelhouse and the hulahooplights made my list. by the time we got home we realized that we had listed all of the displays we had seen, each design extraordinary, a celebration of the marriage of color and light and and sound and garden.

our late-night snack had a different air. the gift of being outside in the cold. the gift of beauty. the gift we had given ourselves – permission to splurge a little. a new year and its new intentions.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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a chicken and a cow in autumn. [two artists tuesday]

my nephew called. i guess technically he isn’t my nephew now but neither one of us cares about the technicality of it. we talked a couple years ago but not since. no matter. he was ironing and he thought of me. he described how ironing makes you just kind of slow down and lets your mind wander. and so he followed his instinct and dialed. i told him i was glad he wasn’t thinking of me as he was washing the floor. he agreed and said that a washing-the-floor conversation wouldn’t be as whimsical.

whimsical.

i loved how he used that word. we slowed down our hiking, shuffling our feet through the leaves on the trail, david encouraging me to chat. my nephew and i laughed and told stories, asked questions, laughed some more. later, in some text-reminiscing, he asked me if i still had the beer cap earrings he had bought me when we were together up-north many years back. he said, “you’re one of my favorites.” i walked slowly into flashes of another time of life. it was a gift.

from the deck it looks like a chicken. suddenly a chicken leaf fell from the maple tree and landed squarely on our little curlicue-fence. i stopped at the top of the steps and drew d’s attention to it. “look at the chicken back there!” i insisted. we laughed at the chicken on our fence. ok, not exactly. but imagination is a funny thing. we make castles out of refrigerator boxes and gazelles out of cumulus puffs. we create out of thin air.

“have you noticed that autumn is like a yellow cow?” (pablo neruda) “have they counted the gold in the cornfields?”

we are not alone in our imaginings. pondering leaves, clouds, swirls in the lake’s surface, rocks on the trail, i wonder what it would be to not ponder these things. i feel like i might laugh a little less, like there would be a little less whimsy.

i’m not sure how autumn is like a yellow cow, though i am sure that is valid for pablo. it’s all good. it makes the world go round with a little more pizzazz. there is gold everywhere.

right now i’m just wondering where exactly my beer cap earrings are.

*****

read DAVID’S thoughts this TWO ARTISTS TUESDAY


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lusting over glossy card stock. [saturday morning smack-dab.]

lusting over brochures is kind of my thing. there is nothing quite like the dreamy four-color-magazine-quality-glossy-coated-silk-card-stock intrigue that beckons me, inviting imaginative adventure and exploring. a good brochure will take you there, place you there, let you sink in and never want to leave. i am clearly the targeted recipient of their magic. and i am – ahem – a collector.

like my relationship with catalogs, i can immerse in the story of the place, the action…it’s deeply satisfying.

sometimes we stop at the welcome center and i load up with all the possibilities of our destination, never to crack them open. it’s like having a treasure chest, knowing you have the treasure chest, not-knowing what’s in the treasure chest but knowing it’s enough you have it. a back pocket full of shiny coins, should you need them.

and sometimes we stop at the welcome center and i find something in a brochure that will not let go. i wonder and ponder and strategize and scheme how to get there, how to experience it, how to afford it. i’m a little overwhelmed by the draw of whatever the thing/place/action is, but i know the likelihood of it is relatively dim.

we clicked on an article on the-island-phone the other day. like shiny card stock, it beautifully featured a resort in utah: amangiri. there was nothing about this resort that wasn’t stunning.

i’ve never stayed in a resort, nonetheless one where your pillow-piled-down-comfortered-bed was out under the stars in the desert, your space open to remote canyonlands of red rock. my breathing got more rapid as i showed david. i clicked on “make a reservation”.

$12,000 a night.

deeper reservation diving revealed a range of pricing, verbose reviews, glamorous indeed, this place.

$12,000/night.

a little fancy.

clearly we won’t be staying there.

but, in the way that catalogs and brochures also function for me, i saved it and looked at it a few more times. i’ll probably glance a time or two more at this wildly expensive place to stay. and then i’ll delete it. because, by then, i’ll be satisfied.

and besides, the tiny blue airbnb house on one of the side streets in the mountain town in north carolina is also magical. it will afford us a chance to unplug, to hike unfamiliar trails, to cook and eat out on the front porch watching traffic go by, to immerse in a new place, a getaway.

and it is also dreamy.

*****

read DAVID’s thoughts this SATURDAY MORNING

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