Posted on November 18, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
It’s true. She is sometimes hypnotized by items in a grocery store. At first I mistakenly thought she was reading every word on the labels or was frozen in some pain. Now I know better. She gets lost in reminiscence. The stuff on the shelf serves as a memory trigger.
My job is twofold: first, to protect her from oncoming carts. People with lists are notoriously poor drivers. Kneeling people, lost in a memory fit, are hard to see. Second, after an adequate amount of time, to snap her out of it. Her capacity for threading back in memory-time knows no equal so sometimes she needs a nudge to return to the present.
Oh, Yes. There’s a third job: after such a long trip her joints actually freeze and she sometimes needs help standing up.
Posted on November 17, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
It looked like a spiny dragon’s tail or Nudibranch that abandoned ship eons ago and, somehow, its petrified remains traveled from the deep of the sea to a trail in Wisconsin. Perhaps it was the skeleton tip-of-the-tail of a dinosaur. My imagination flooded with mythic-creature-possibilities. As Kerri knelt to snap her photos, I carefully scanned the woods. One cannot be too careful when dragons and dinosaurs might be lurking about.
While I was pretending to be watched by Jurassic critters, it occurred to me that imagination is a muscle. In order to exercise it, to make it strong, it must be used. With intention.
In truth, we (humans) daily exercise our imaginations though we don’t know it. Imagining that we can control what other people see or think. Imagining that the worst will happen. Imagining what might have been. Imagining that our day will be mundane. Imagining ourselves too small in the story of our lives. Imagining ourselves as superheroes saving the day.
That’s one way of exercising the muscle. Another way is to imagine possibilities. Imagine the ridiculous. Pop open the expanse of conceivability. In this direction of imagination exercise, it’s hard to take yourself so seriously.
And, I suppose, that’s the point. Hope slips in when life is held lightly. Hope and imagination-in-the-direction-of-impossible-possibilities are one and the same thing. Spacious. Surrender. In my reckoning, when I have been in the tightest bind or stuck in the worst scenario, the person who shows up, the door that opens, the hand that extends…is beyond my imagining and arrives when I let go.
Last night, deep in the night, I lay awake and listened to Kerri’s soft breathing and Dogga’s gentle old-dog snores. The window was cracked to allow in the cool night air. The chimes sang softly in the midnight breeze. A decade ago, I couldn’t have believed such riches of life would be mine.
But like a dinosaur watching me in the woods, I must have, somewhere way back then, closed my eyes and imagined it.
Posted on November 14, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
The wide strip dividing the parking areas hosted a vast colony of Shaggy Mane mushrooms. From a distance they looked like an epic creation of AndyGoldsworthy. There were so many, made stark white in the sun, that they begged a closer look. “What is that?” she asked. I had no idea.
We’ve all seen pop-up memorials, a sea of markers or flags placed in a field to represent the number of people lost. From far away the colony appeared to be one of those. Human made. A tiny-yet-vast shrine. A passing car stopped abruptly. The driver jumped out with his camera. We were not alone in our curiosity.
They did not come into focus until we were right on top of them. “Mushrooms” she gasped and reached for her camera. My head spun. Not human but nature made! The shock of realization made me laugh. I was almost relieved that, in these times, we’d discovered a miracle of abundant life and not a memorial to unimaginable loss.
The thought gave me pause.
I turned to face the sun and closed my eyes. I listened to the rustling leaves and her care-full excitement at capturing images without damaging the colony. I smelled the crisp air and wished to be nowhere else. Miracles of abundant life.
Posted on November 11, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
If ever there was a Smack-Dab that captured the essence of our conversations, it is this. I am forever asking Kerri unanswerable esoteric questions. She is forever bringing my feet back to the ground. I am forever expounding on recondite yada-yada. She is forever bringing me back to the tangible moment, to what is right in front of my eyes.
There is only one thing that I am entirely sure of: we are a perfect match.
Posted on November 6, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
As long as we’ve been walking trials – I include trails in other states and nations – we’ve never encountered a salamander. It was so out of the ordinary that, at first, we thought someone had dumped a no-longer-wanted pet on the trail. We railed at the cruelty of humans. But, after a quick google search, we found that this critter was natural to the area. Not a pet, after all. Nocturnal, so rarely seen in the daylight. We recanted our railing, changed our tune, and counted the encounter as rare and special. Which it was.
Our salamander encounter was also a marker in time. This post marks the 300th week of our Melange. 300 weeks of writing about our encounters, our ramblings, our rantings, our hopes, our dreams, our dilemmas. At the beginning of week 1, we placed these words at the top of our website: “Brewed from our studio, sometimes fresh and sometimes aged, we offer a daily blend of goodness, thought, laughter, and beauty.”
We can’t claim to know your experience of our too-much-writing but we can report without reservation that we’ve profited mightily. Each day we sit together and write. No peeking at the other’s post. And then we read. We talk about what the photo prompt inspired, the great mystery of inspiration; where did that idea come from?
As milestone symbols go, a salamander is a good one. In my quick research of salamander-as-symbol, these were the first words I read: “Salamander opens us up to secrets within ourselves, secrets within others, and secrets of the spirit.”
And so we step toward week 301 with a healthy dose of salamander blessing, a renewed intention to brew some goodness from our studio, and a whole lot of gratitude for you – out there – giving some of your time to read our daily blend of goodness, thought, laughter, and beauty.
Posted on November 4, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
One of the first paintings I did for Kerri is called Dancing In The Front Yard. From the very beginning we’ve had a natural impulse to dance. In the kitchen. On the deck. In an airport. On the trail. In the front yard.
If we break into spontaneous slow-dancing and the Dogga is near, it never fails that he joins us. Standing on his hind legs, paws on our shoulders, together we three dance our celebration of togetherness. There is nothing better on this earth.
Posted on November 3, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
“I’m making old guy sounds,” I said. All morning I’ve been extra-moaning-and-groaning. Clearing my throat. “I’m making the sound my dad used to make!” She laughed. We are in cahoots, partners in this aging thing.
The temperatures are dropping and my inner weather station is alerting me to the changes. Achy joints. Sinus headaches. I’m not sure why an inner weather station is necessary. I can see the snow on the ground. The cold wind is hard to miss. The back door is sticking. There are plenty of indicators that the seasons are changing. “I know! I know already!” I say to my buckling knees. They seem to think that I missed the temperature plummet. “As if I didn’t already know.”
She laughs.
Sometimes when I walk across the parking lot toward the grocery store I pretend to be really old. She punches my arm and whispers “Stop it!” And then she looks around to make sure no one is watching my antics. “What! I’m practicing!” I say. “Practice makes perfect.” Another punch. “It’s the only way to Carnegie Hall!” I shout, defending my self. A third punch. And then she laughs.
Mission accomplished.
The view is near. The view is far. The day we met we climbed out a window onto the roof, drank wine, and shared life stories. The wind was cold off the lake so we wrapped blankets around ourselves. When it was too cold we came inside, sat in front of a fire, and shared more life stories. She read a story to me, something she’d written. She wanted me to know. She played the piano for me. I wanted to know.
We don’t have decades of shared memory so we share stories. We want to know. Looking back as we move forward. Comparing newly discovered aches and pains. Dusting off old heartbreaks, roads not taken. We are in cahoots, partners in this life thing.
And, to my great delight, captive witness to my endless antics, mostly, she laughs.
[let me take you back will not only take you back but will also give you a lift]
Posted on October 28, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
Today is one of those days. There’s not much I can add to illuminate the wisdom of the comic strip. Rest easy knowing that my brain is putty and I am off to take a nap. Somehow, “nap” floated to the tippy-top of the we-do list and I always do what’s on the list.
Posted on October 27, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
We are avid late-night-watchers of people hiking trails or climbing mountains. Some time ago it occurred to me that, even in the remote wilderness, there are known paths and helpful trail markers. The markers may be official park service trail signs or they might be cairns or sticks placed on the ground in the shape of an arrow. “Don’t be fooled,” the arrow signals, “The trail is this way.” People who came before helping the people who will come behind.
Most of the hikers and climbers also have help from satellites. They carry gps to illuminate the trail, provide elevation data, locate water sources, and weather information. It’s nothing less than remarkable the plethora of information available to someone strapping a pack on their back and stepping into an adventure. They are beholden to the people who came before who thought long and hard about ways to make the journey easier.
And, these same plugged in hikers pass it forward, mostly, through acts of courtesy toward people they will possibly never meet. They do their part to help the people who will come next. They cut brush from a trail. They re-stack the cairn stones. They pick up trash as they go. They reconstruct the arrow after the wind moved the pieces. They invent better markers, some from outer space.
I think we watch them because of the culture that has evolved on the trail or on the quest to scale the mountain. They give us a dose of hope for humankind. They know without doubt that they are stewards of the path and of those who walk the path. They live from a dedicated personal responsibility that is not in opposition to a group responsibility. They are their own and their brothers/sisters keeper.
There are trail angels that show up in unlikely locations with hot food. There are angels that leave water caches in the desert without which the traveler would not be able to reach their next destination. Their purpose is to make the passage easier for others because others have made the passage easier for them. It is not a difficult concept to grasp.
A culture of support. It’s why, at the end of each day, we check in with the people on the trail.
Posted on October 21, 2023 by davidrobinsoncreative
We love to cook. We love food. We enjoy trying new recipes. We delight when we cook one of our favorite old standards. A day does not pass on the metaphoric trail that Kerri does not look at me and say, “I’m hungry. You hungry?” There’s no time for verbs when food calls.
There are a few dietary restrictions in our house so we have evolved into healthy-ish eaters. Yet, there’s another reason that we don’t keep too many sweet things in the house. I will eat them. All of them. If you want to get secret information from me, all you need do is strap me down and put a piece of flourless chocolate cake just out of reach. I’ll pretend to resist, but not for long.
The Direction of Intention 