I should not be surprised that a plant named Creeping Bellflower is considered a weed. An invasive plant. The horticulture websites warn that it is a “too vigorous herbaceous perennial.” In other words, left to its own devices, it will take over. I am planning on incorporating that phrase into my vocabulary. I can’t wait for the Cyrano-de-Berjerac-day I pull from my bag of witty rejoinders, “You, sir, are an invasive plant! A too vigorous herbaceous perennial!”
I confess, at the end of this latest fantasy, I thought “Creeping Bellflower must be a republican. Invasive. Not what it seems. Unchecked it will take over.” Shame on me. I laughed at my own horticulture-joke.
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora
Lately, when I close up shop for the day and come down the stairs from my office, Kerri and I meet on the back deck. We choose sun or shade, settle in, and talk about our day. There are stories to share, ideas to consider, speculations. Sometimes she’ll catch me up on the news, what’s happened in the world since I climbed the stairs in the morning.
Lately, listening to the news-of-the-day is like strapping a large stone to my chest and jumping into deep water. An intentional sink. “Why would I do that to myself?” I ask myself. I call Kerri’s morning surf through social media her “horror trawl.”
The back deck is a place of hope. I can hear the news-of-the-day on the back deck because, while listening, I watch the hummingbirds zip and hover. The evenings are alive with the most extraordinary bird song. The gurgle of the pond is a soothing meditation. The vibrant life on the back deck is immediate and vital. I know the neighborhood fox is actively hunting the neighborhood bunnies so it’s not all rainbows and sunshine, but it is natural process. It is not excessive or hyped or angry. It’s life without self-indulgence or puffery.
I can hear the news of the day on the back deck because I can detach from it. In comparison to the hummingbirds or the squirrels running atop the fence, it seems like a bad soap opera, a cast of characters dedicated to their guck.
After the intentional sink, for an extra dose of hope, I visit the tomato plants. They seem to be doubling in size every day. The blossoms have appeared. Kerri takes my hand and leads me to the pots. “Lookit!” she smiles “More tomatoes in waiting!”
Tomatoes in waiting. Harbingers of good things to come. The stuff of life – to taste and touch. Little red bursts of captured sunshine. The real stuff. Life expressing life.
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora
The Post-It note beside my desk reads “Zebra.” It is a reminder to be more like the zebra. After a near miss with a lion, the zebra does not return to the herd and perpetuate their stress by recounting the story over and over to any other zebra that will listen. The zebra shakes off the adrenaline rush and moves on. No extra stress necessary.
For many years I’ve known that most actions are relatively easy to perform, the stress we experience comes from the story we wrap around the action. There’s a full range of stress stories, from “I can’t do it” to “I have to be…” The it-has-to-be-done-now story is pervasive. At some point in my youth I got it into my human head that faster was better. It’s not a good story since it requires the lion to be on your heels all the time. Watch people sitting in a traffic jam: the story of stuckness has otherwise rational people red-faced and pounding on their steering wheels. The I-have-to-be-there-now story is a recipe for never being present. Running, running, running. Lion on your tail.
Zebra.
When I moved in Kerri cautioned me that the to-do list would never be done. We live in an old house and, like an old body, extra care and patience is required. It’s been quite a transition. This house has become my teacher. It’s in my nature to get-things-done. True confession: If I start a project, I become myopic until it’s finished. All my life, after starting a painting, I lay awake at night rolling the possibilities over and over in my mind until the final brush stroke hits the canvas.
This old house has taught me to let go of my story of need-to-finish. It’s softened the edges of my Puritan work ethic. I’ve grown to appreciate having to tighten the handle on the backdoor once a week. Some day we’ll get to putting knobs on the kitchen cabinets. I’ve come to appreciate jiggling the burner to make the stove work. Our monthly puddle-prevention-thaw of the freezer is part of the rhythm of our lives.
Zebra. No resistance. It’ll get done when it gets done.
Life is infinitely better without an imaginary lion on my heels. It makes me wonder why I spent so much of my life creating stress for myself. I’ll save my stress for the real lions and you can bet when one of those appear, I’ll tell you about it. Again and again. I’m a human after all. Half the fun of being human is telling the tale so I want to make certain my tale, if I’m going to perpetuate my stress, has bonafide lions snapping at my hooves.
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora
As an artist, I have fondness for brushes. I’ve been known to disappear into an art store and lose significant amounts of time in the brush aisle. I rarely buy them – I am notoriously hard on my brushes and wait until they fall apart to replace them – but when I replace them I feel as if I just hit the lotto or found a buried treasure in the art store.
I cut my hair to make my first brush. It was mostly useless and left strands of my hair in the painting. It was the essential need for a brush that clued me in to my life path. I didn’t want it; I needed it.
Lately I found myself wandering through a strange and alien world: the Ulta store, followed by an eye-opening trip into Sephora. Despite the ubiquitous advertising, the fact that I live in this society, how is it possible that I had no idea of the nuance layers of soaps and cremes and removers and buffers and…brushes. Beautiful brushes. As Stephanie once famously exclaimed of me, “You are a man after all!”
Clueless.
I was, of course, fascinated by the brushes. Not just the brushes, but the need to have the right brush. Buffers and liners, fans and foundation and shadow brushes! I am a painter of people, I paint the image of faces, and was fascinated watching the painters of actual faces consider and choose their tools. The right brush. Blush, smooth, hard line.
I cannot count the number of times people have told me that they are not creative, that they do not have a creative bone in their bodies. Standing in the alien land, watching the painters carefully choose their brushes, I wondered how so much creative energy, so much enthusiasm for the right color, the right medium, the best brush, goes unrecognized.
This alien land was pulsing with imagination, desire for the right tool, and the drive to share and help and create. There was a generosity of spirit rarely found on the other side of the doors. Women helping women. Laughter and advice. I liked being in this strange land of strange brushes and kindness – even as an outsider. A stranger. I found a breath of fresh air (perfumed as it was) while following my guides through the brush aisle.
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora
The peony in our yard is sandwiched between tall grasses. We’re careful to cut back the grasses so the peony has space and air to breathe. Kerri watches it. She checks on it daily. She calls me to “Comesee!” when the buds appear. She pulls my arm, “It’s happening!” on the day the buds open into full bloom. In our house peony-bloom is cause for celebration.
The blossoms do not last long, a week, perhaps a few days more if we’re lucky. And then they are gone.
The blooms are passing but the plant is sturdy. Sometimes I feel that the peony is a good artist. It works all year drinking in sun and water and life so it might produce a few moments of lovely. Every single day, through the dog days of August, the harsh cold of winter, the wet and muddy spring, is necessary for the peony to bring its fragile and passing burst of pink beauty – its expression – into plain sight.
Late at night, the tornado sirens sent us to the basement. We sat in rocking chairs and listened to the roar of the storm, the flash and house-rattling thunder. I looked at my easel. Currently, my studio is filled with boxes. Kerri eyes her studio; it’s next up for a good cleaning-out. Revamp and refresh.
In the basement, sirens blaring and storms howling, we talked about whether or not she would ever play again. Whether or not I would ever again pick up a brush. It’s an open question. It’s a deep-in-the-night question.
It’s a peony question. I wonder if, in the dead of winter, roots reaching deeper than the frozen ground, if the peony knows that it will, with certainty, bloom?
In A Split Second from As Sure As The Sun
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
We are the first wave of humans to experience a pace of change so fast that the media of our memories becomes irrelevant – and sometimes inaccessible – even before the paint on the memory is dry. A crank driven film camera caught a toddler version of me running down the hall in my footie pajamas on Christmas morning. Images rare and, at the time, expensive to develop, our technology makes those films seem prehistoric. Kerri and I work on computers that are separated by over a decade. Mine works lightning fast and hers…is teaching her patience.
I’ve recently been pondering a quote attributed to many: “We shape our tools, and thereafter our tools shape us.” Facebook is a tool. Twitter, too. This screen that opens entire universes for me is a tool. These screens that pull us into them are tools. Our stories, our expectations, our experience of time and space and each other, shaped by our tool. This river runs so fast that front page news is less than an afterthought tomorrow. We take so many photos and movies that we can’t remember taking them. It’s a million miles from the days of precious and rare footage in footie pajamas.
Kerri found the bin. It holds many treasures. Movies that her dad recorded of her first album release concert. Early performances. Recording of movies complete with commercial breaks (before tevo was a glimmer in its inventor’s eye). Luckily, we have a VHS player. And it works! Some night, very soon, we’ll plug in the player and I will get to see her, at the very beginning of her career, long before we met, play.
Reaching back. Racing forward. Little miracles of remembrance rendered obsolete by faster and smaller miracles of moment-capture.
We sit squarely upon the event horizon, our memories both a bin found in the basement and an intentional composition – Instagram stories, Facebook memories, a story shaped by our tools, tools shaping us, a creative act.
As the cowboy rode passed us he asked if we’d noticed the Mayapples. We laughed. This same cowboy, a few years ago, taught us about the Mayapples. He’d forgotten but seemed pleased when we reminded him. “That cowboy loves his Mayapples,” I said as he rode on down the trail.
We see each other through soda straws. A few brief encounters, a man on a horse dressed as if he just rode in from Wyoming, a lover of Mayapples. I really know nothing of his story or the realities of his life. I thought about him as we continued our walk. He might be a surgeon or a professor of botany. He might be an apparition. I doubt that “cowboy, lover of Mayapples” is the totality of his identity. I have many story-possibilities rolling for the cowboy, yet, my bet is that I’d be surprised if I had more than a straw’s view into his life.
Most of our judgments about others is a result of the straw’s view. We are master storytellers and only require the slightest prompt to spin a full tale. We see a 30 second news spot and believe we have the complete story of someone’s life. I suspect most of what we fear about other people is mostly soda-straw concoction. Laura Blumenfeld’s book, Revenge, is a great reminder of what is possible when the soda-straw view, the assigned role, expands into a full human portrait. A closer look always reveals a richer human story.
Later down the trail I howled with laughter. We’ve been fans of the Mayapple since our first encounter with the cowboy yet never knew there was a blossom hidden beneath the canopy of leaves. “Oh, my god!” Kerri exclaimed, lifting the broad leaf, exposing the white bloom. We lifted a few more leaves, each hiding a surprise flower. “I had no idea!” we chirped in unison.
“Have you noticed the Mayapples?” asked the cowboy. Apparently not.
Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora
Next to the closet where we keep our shoes and old sweatshirts is a bucket. In the bucket are a few walking sticks we’ve plucked from the trail, used and brought home. We rarely walk with sticks so the few that made the trip home are in the bucket to remind us of special walks, the times we needed some stick-aid. And thank-goodness there was a stick available when we needed it.
In the bucket, alongside the walking sticks, is Poppo’s cane.
Poppo’s cane came in handy this week when Kerri broke her foot. She is a circle-walker and our house has square rooms so she regularly arcs too close to the doorjambs. She’s adept at breaking her pinky toe.
This time she broke more than one bone. When the yellow-green swelling hit her ankle we took her to the doctor and then she went for a spin in the x-ray machine. For a few days, I was her mobility prop and then Poppo’s cane took my place and became her trusty stick-aid.
She looked at me this morning and, with knitted-brow, asked the obvious question, “What’s going on?” I had no answer. In the span of a couple of years, she’s broken her wrists, torn ligaments, had fingers that simple refused to bend, lost mobility in her left shoulder, tendonosis, a tendon injury in her left foot, a digestive system that refused to digest,… She’s had a heaping plate of “what’s going on with my body? What’s going on with my life?”
Both are great questions to ask.
What do you do when your questions have no definitive answers? Lean on Poppo’s cane and take another step. What else? Appreciate the stick-aid. Perhaps one day, with a little perspective, while looking at the bucket of useful sticks, the story will make some sense. The questions will find understanding.
In the meantime, I’m considering moving Kerri into a furniture-less yurt. My theory is that circle walkers are safer racing around in obstacle-free circular homes.
Kerri’s albums are available in iTunes & streaming on Pandora
Because our yard is a festival of dandelions and our trail is alive with the vibrant yellow flowers, just for kicks, I Googled “dandelion recipes.” Coffees and teas, salads and pizza, quesadilla, syrup, jelly and cookies; eat the root, chomp the greens, it seems dandelions are nature’s one-stop-yummy-snack-shop. Brats! And, of course, let us not forget about dandelion wine!
How is it that this pervasive-misunderstood-as-an-invader-plant is so edible and rich in possibilities? I’ve never eaten a dandelion. If I can find an insecticide-free-zone I’m going to pick a bucket full and try a few recipes. My bet is that Master Marsh has washed down a dandelion or two en route to picking a tune on his guitar. He can make anything – and does – so my future dandelion meal will follow MM around the kitchen and learn his favorite dandy-lion recipe and then enjoy the concert after the plates are licked clean. I’ll do the dishes after the show. It’s the least I can do.
One of my favorite rituals of the spring season is to watch Kerri discover and photograph the first dandelion. It’s like the return of an old friend. “Look-It!” she points and cheers. The camera comes out and a sweet photoshoot commences. She has a fond spot in her heart for dandelions. I wish I had the series of First Dandelion Sightings of the Season. Her eye has changed. The more photographs she takes, the better her composition-eye is becoming. Art works like that. Do it again and again and it gets better, more sophisticated. Easier. Her eye was great to begin with but now I do double-takes. “Whoa!” I say, “Let me see that again.”
Tom used to tell me that the alternative schools were filled with artists. Young people who do not fit in and cannot thrive in the restriction of the lawn. Pervasive-misunderstood-invader-plants. Pulled and placed where they cannot disrupt the blanket of green. Yet, so rich in possibilities. So versatile in form, capable of feeding the soul. Medicinal people. Seers. And, when they age (ahem), they make dandelion delicacies, play music for their friends, and celebrate the small pop of yellow on the side of the path.
It’s good not to be a lawn.
kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora
Look up the word “suffrage” in the dictionary and you’ll discover it means, “the right to vote.” Synonyms include “voice,” “enfranchisement,” and “choice.” It took a hundred years of protest for women to secure the right to vote in these un-united United States. As we prepare to take a giant step backwards it should not be lost on us that the battle for a woman’s voice to be heard continues to this day.
I’ve written before of my experience in a jury pool. I was in the third group of 50 to be called into the courtroom. The judge gave us a single instruction: “Raise your hand if you either have been or know someone who’s been the victim of sexual assault.” Every member of my group raised their hands. The same had happened with the previous two groups. Out of 150 potential jurors, 150 had either been or knew intimately someone who had been the victim of sexual assault. “How am I ever going to seat an impartial jury,” the judge said to us and to himself.
It was a great question. Here’s a better question: why is sexual assault so prevalent in our nation?
The cult of true womanhood is, of course, a man’s idea. What about a powerful woman, with full protected rights and choice over her body, makes (a minority in) this nation froth and scream? What exactly are these few trying to control?
Equality. Actual equality. A promise unfulfilled for so many.
To my long ago judge I would say that we cannot seat an impartial jury until we experience an impartial court and a governing body willing and able to protect the rights of all citizens equally. It’s the ideal, the organizing principle of this nation-of-promise. Or is it?
A woman with an equal voice and equal pay, with the same protections a man enjoys, will, of course, express fully her equality. It begs the rhetorical question: What exactly are these few afraid of?
Suffrage. Enfranchisement. Choice. Equality.
Kerri’s music is available on iTunes & streaming on Pandora
The Direction of Intention 