Doodlebug It! [David’s blog on Not So Flawed Wednesday]

Some words are just too yummy to ignore. For instance, doodlebugging! Who wouldn’t want to toss that delicious word into almost any conversation-salad or happy poem? “The poor man was doodlebugging to no avail!” I am surprised that doodlebugging escaped the keen word-eye of Dr. Seuss!

Doodlebugging means to dowse or divine for treasure or petroleum. I ask myself, “What would I rather find, petroleum or treasure?” Well, I guess I would need more information. What kind of treasure? I imagine myself diligently doodlebugging in the backyard, my “Y” shaped stick goes wild! I dig a deep hole. Kerri stands on the deck, none-too-pleased with my doodlebugging destruction, until I leap into the hole and pull up a hefty pirate’s treasure, complete with many gold doubloons!

And, if I don’t divine for imagined treasure, I need to know whether or not I own the rights on the land I am doodlebugging. There’s no sense in doodlebugging for oil if someone else gets the profits for my newly dowsed black gold, texas tea.

I’ve decided that our poor sad nation needs a good doodlebugging. Despite the rhetoric, petroleum won’t cure what ails us so I suggest we doodlebug for treasure. Specifically, we seem to have lost our most valuable treasure: our moral compass. It has to be out there in the grass somewhere. Perhaps if neighbors across the land, regardless of political affiliation, met in the front yard or on the street, each with a handy “Y” shaped stick, and began a serious doodlebugging project in search for that pesky compass, together we’d find what we seek. A common cause which, after all, forms the foundation for unity and provides the seeds for ethical decision-making. Ethics are usually surfaced – or resurface – when people decide to serve something larger than their own interests.

We used to have one. I mean a common cause. It was called the Constitution, a document that framed, guided and preserved our democracy. Toward a more perfect union. By the way, union means ‘joining’ or ‘uniting.’ It’s what makes our common cause, in the midst of so much rich diversity, more perfect. The challenge is that the Constitution is lost or in hiding. Parchment is notoriously hard to doodlebug. One person will never find it. So, maybe if we all meet together in the front yard, armed with a harmless stick and a good intention, shake hands, laugh a little, and work with the people we so dearly love to vilify, we just might find the medicine our divided-against-itself nation needs. It’s hard to hate someone once you meet them in person, talk for a spell about family, food and “So, what do you do for work?”

A little friendly neighbor-chat while doodlebugging together will do away with the abstractions, labels, and dial-down the fear-mongering. In our common search for the lost compass, we just might learn that we have more in common than we’ve been led to believe.

read Kerri’s blog about Y

like. share. support. comment. subscribe…or go meet, talk and doodlebug with someone new! thank you.

Count The Angels [David’s blog on Two Artists Tuesday]

One day on the trail we talked of the good angels that surround us. 20 and Brad and Jen. The Up North Gang. Horatio and Guy. Smith and Dwig and Arnie. There are too many to count. Dogga is an angel. John and Michele. People we rely on. People who show up when we need help. People who reach out with a kind word. People who let you know that they are there. Alex. Kim. Kate and Jerry. Buffalo Bob. People who listen when we need to talk it through. People who inspire us. People that we simply know are out there, our spiritual safety net. MM. Master Miller. Judy. People who have walked before us. Tom Mck, Quinn, Columbus. Beaky and Pa.

Too many to count.

I believe County Rainy Day was an angel sent to remind me not to fixate on a single path but to look left and right: what might appear a deviation is, in fact, the heart path. Like County Rainy Day, some angels appear in our lives for a brief moment and then are gone. The security guard who let me stay in the small airport after closing; he knew I didn’t have money for a taxi or a hotel. An angel.

This was the point of our trail conversation: the angels that populate our lives are not ethereal abstractions. They are the people and critters who walk the path with us. They show up in critical moments and during the everyday. They are as messy and confused as we are and unafraid to show it. They, therefore, want to help make our path easier. We want to help make their path easier.

And, in the process of helping, of showing up for each other – together – we fill this very short life window with treasure beyond measure. Presence. Attention. Support. Encouragement. Reflection. Good angel stuff.

[happy birthday, pa]

read Kerri’s blogpost about ANGELS

like. share. support. comment. angel for others. angel for yourself. appreciate it all. we do.

buymeacoffee is an angel processing plant that manufactures good angels in the form of “tip jar” support for the whacky acts of the artists you appreciate.

Wag-A-Wag [on DR Thursday]

We call it his wag-a-wag. Dogga came to us with his tail docked, and as an exceptionally happy pooch, his stumpy little tail is often in full expression. He leaves no doubt about his anticipation and enthusiasm. Walk into a room and the wag-a-wag of the supposedly sleeping Dogga will start to flutter. “It would be so good for you to love on me!” And, the wag-a-wag is always right.

Sometimes it seems so simple, this art of living. If I had ten Academy Awards and a Pulitzer Prize or two that would be great, but I wouldn’t trade a single sweet moment with the wag-a-wag for a plaque to hang on my wall or a statue to put on my shelf. Don’t get me wrong, I’d delight in a degree of success, but I know at the end of the day, in my last few moments, I will treasure my life with the wag-a-wag, the mornings on the raft with the sun streaming in the window, drinking coffee, talking about the day, and Dogga rolling over just-within-reach (he’s an Aussie and has a spatial quirk) for his morning belly-belly.

It’s the rule of the wag-a-wag. Walk into the room and signal simple enthusiasm, an expectation of mutual generosity. Not only is it so good for me to love on you but it is so good for you to love on me. One-and-the-same-action.

read Kerri’s blog post about COZY

nap with dog-dog & babycat, 36×48, 2020

nap with dog-dog & babycat © 2020 david robinson

Constellate [on KS Friday]

Our 3am banana conversation was about cleaning out. The past few years have, as Skip is fond of saying, tipped the apple cart. Our life-apples are akimbo. So, as we pick them up, we are also sorting. It’s not just the stuff in our closets or the post-water-line-mess-explosion in the basement, it’s also the psychological/mental/spiritual/emotional debris. What bag of trash can we finally toss in the bin? What small treasure was unearthed that surprised us? What will we carry forward into the next chapter that informs who we’re now becoming?

I sat in the basement for a few minutes yesterday, staring at the canvas on my easel. Each day I see a little more of the painting that I will someday paint. I do not now have the time or energy to make it visible. This canvas is becoming a marker in time. It calls. My creative energy is dedicated to other projects and I am careful not to over-tap it. That is new. Knowing my limits. Honoring the creative well is part of who I am becoming. I am in no rush. That’s new, too.

“I’m certain these were my momma’s,” Kerri said, showing me the tic-tacs. She was cleaning out the pantry and found them in the way-back. Beaky was a fan of tic-tacs. Treasure. And, how did they get lost in the recesses of our pantry? No matter, they inspired some good stories, reminiscing. “It makes no sense, but I’m keeping these,” she said. Treasures do not need to make sense.

I learned a big lesson during the decade that it took me to complete and produce The Lost Boy: I started it as a project for Tom to perform and it became a project I had to perform for Tom. His passing was the final piece necessary to complete the story he wanted to tell. His passing made the play possible to perform. The lesson: we cannot see it all. We think we understand “why” but mostly our reasoning is constellation. Dots connected in the vast open sky.

The tipping of the apple cart. 3am bananas. Next chapter imagined and arriving. A tic-tac kiss from the past. Making space for constellation. We are in awe and not in a hurry.

Kerri’s albums are available on iTunes and streaming on Pandora

read Kerri’s blogpost about TICTACS

connected/released from the heart © 1995 kerri sherwood

Capture The Essence

Dog-Dog and treasure

Dog-Dog and treasure

Tripper Dog-Dog-Dog gathers his stuff around him. He has two stinky blankets that he pulls from his crate each morning, a red Kong, a blue chew bone with a handy looped rope pull, another blue toy that once looked like a jack but has been chewed beyond recognition, a once-stuffed moose from Josh that is now an unrecognizable shredded mess though he carries it around as if it was precious cargo. There is also a muddy tennis ball, a raw hide bone and usually a sock pilfered from my sock basket. If Kerri and I shift locations within the house, move from the living room to the sun room, Dog-Dog’s worldly possessions will slowly migrate with us. He is subtle and I rarely see the migration in progress; I suddenly realize that I am sitting within a nest of Dog-Dog treasure.

My favorite section in The Lost Boy is a series of questions that Tom asked: 1) if you were given a cardboard box and it was all that was going to be allowed to provide proof that you walked on this earth, what would you put in your box? 2) Beyond proof, what would you put in the box that captured the essence of who you were, that distinguished you from all the others? 3)What are the collections, the things you gather around you that are somehow supposed to tell others who you are? These questions might seem simple but are surprisingly complex. How does your stuff tell the story of who you are? Or, a better question: does your stuff define you? Can your stuff – your car, your house, your granite counter tops, your clothes, your jewelry,…, – capture your essence?

Tom asked two other related and relevant questions: In packing your box, would you be tempted to scrub your life of its messiness? Would you try to eliminate the mundane, the everyday? Would you throw away your rough drafts? Would you ignore the relationships that didn’t work out? Would you explain away the ugliness, the ruthless choices? Would you burn your personal journals so that the future might never glimpse your doubt, your struggles, your frailty?

I would add these questions: What if your essence was only available to you once you value the messiness? What if, in throwing away the mundane, you actually eliminate what is truly special about you? I’ve often taught and touted a tenet from improvisational theatre: drop your clever and pick up your ordinary – most of us diminish/neglect our greatest gifts because we label them as ordinary. They come naturally to us so we don’t always recognize them. In trying so hard to be clever, to be right, to be flawless,…to be other, we regularly overlook the real treasure and relegate ourselves to that most shameful pile labeled ‘ordinary.’

Scrubbing life to a sterile, conflict-less blandness is a recipe for….boredom and, at the end of the day, a very uninteresting box. Of this I am certain: if Dog-Dog had to pack his box today, I would be proud to sit amidst the stinky blankets, blue bones and remnants of moose toy. Dog-Dog hides none of his messiness.

 

Treasure Your Treasure

661. Join me in inspiring truly powerful people. Each day I will add a new thought, story or idea to support your quest and mine.

The process of moving has afforded me two recognitions. First, I’ve found two outlines for books that I meant to write a few years ago, the completed text for a children’s book that only needs the illustrations and another that I only need draw final drafts of illustrations. I found two plays, poorly written, that are waiting patiently for me to revise and reconstruct into health. Who knew that I had so much unfinished work in the file! I am an out-of-sight-out-of-mind kind of guy. Filing cabinets are mausoleums for my projects. If I file them, they might as well not exist. I feel like I just opened a pyramid and a long lost friend was sitting inside and said, “Hey, it’s about time!”

The second recognition is that I have too much stuff. I am an odd duck in that I expect myself to move lightly through this world. It’s not that I have a house full of furniture, I don’t, but I have more books, more files, more paintings, more…stuff, than I want. So, moving has provided the opportunity to lighten up. It has been interesting to see what things I invest in, what carries meaning for me, and what does not. My friend John made me a small box a few years ago and I treasure it. Sam gave me a signed a copy of his book of poetry – I would grab it first if the house was burning down. Tamara made me a glass sun to help me through the winter and I will hold it close until I die, not to mention a growing catalogue of songs that she’s written and recorded that warms me inside. Teru made a quilt for me that is beautiful beyond belief; it evokes gratitude every time I look at it or sleep beneath it. I have DeMarcus Brown’s notes about theatrical design written in a notebook that he made himself almost a century ago. His daughter gave it to me after Marc passed away, saying, “This belongs to you.” I cherish it. My niece Tori sewed for me a purple bear that I have named Mulberry and there is nothing more valuable to me on this earth.

I’ve realized that my treasures are my friendships and the deep love I hold for so many people. I step as a gypsy into this New Year walking into many unknowns and double uncertainties and I’ve just reaffirmed how rich I am in projects, ideas, creative fire and made more wealthy by the vibrant, generous people accompanying me through this life.