being with someone
Lindy’s house felt like vacation every seventh grade weekend, and kept me away from my family. She and I wore paisley print dresses and mock turtlenecks with semi-short skirts to our knees, hooked sandal toe nylons onto garterbelts, wore straight hair, imitated Cher, with thick “I got you Babe” bangs that squared off our faces, striving to look like that perfect blonde girl on Breck shampoo bottles. Continue reading “wack” »
I dreamed instead of learning math
Mrs. Fagg was my junior high home economics teacher and got me serious about sewing. I loved making gingham aprons for my mom and my grandma, and embroidered little designs on the pockets.
Our school chorus took a trip to Sacramento in a yellow bus and sang at a state level singing competition. I sang a solo opening of “Do Re Mi.” and we won a gold lapel pin with a design of the state. Continue reading “defining early priorities” »
we get to live with this
Breathtaking mountains and affordable land make Calaveras County attractive to people like us, which is why we moved here thirteen years ago. West Point currently welcomes Dollar General, trying to revive our depressed town. Land’s purchased and zoned. Impending forces create a fantasy that the store will be the answer to our financial woes. The store is known for selling mostly candy and soda. Calaveras County is super poor, and needs revenue. Many residents love this new business. Not me. Continue reading “box store won’t fix our town” »
Stinson Beach is the most beautiful beach in the world
When my parents weren’t tanked, we had plenty of fun times growing up in Marin County back in the day. We drove up to the Russian River and canoed around, carried kites and hiked straight up from the house up into our hills, pulling apart rusty barbwire fences and squeezing in between, cutting through pastures on the way. My father loved hiking, and we made up funny songs as we walked, poems and skits for each other, gut busting laughs. It almost seemed to make up for unpredictable drunk ugly. Continue reading “fun times” »
pastels are the best
I was eleven years old when I picked up chalk pastels, and intuitively knew what to do. I smeared creamy sunset colors with my hands onto the back of a piece of cardboard. Gorgeous yellow lit up like real light, and a tiny white dot made the perfect sun, burnt oranges were exactly the color of sky. I used the sides of both my hands to blend purple into the horizon line, like I’d done it a billion times before. I’d made something perfect. Life with pastels was beautiful. Continue reading “art as my truth” »
love those books
The more you read
The more you grow
The more you grow
The more you know
The more you know
The stronger your voice
When speaking your mind
Or making a choice Continue reading “making contact with reading” »
what do we know about time?
Many people believe time is a theory of fourth dimension, like the essence of the hands on a clock. Part of the scientist Newton’s theory was that time was as a flow, a key dimensional role in math and physics, as well as behavior. Time measures change. We live in time. What happens when we die? Continue reading “hermit crab dwelling” »
paper became my trusted friend
My sixth grade teacher distributed little manila booklets with fat blue lines .
“These are your private journals, and you can write about anything going on in your life.”
I’d never considered writing before. I could write truth.
I could describe catastrophes, like my Dad’s time in Napa State Hospital, returning months later and trying, but unable to stop drinking. My mom, brother and I glad/not glad to see him, but he brought bingeing boomerangs. He lost another job, lost his car (again) or locked himself up in his bedroom wearing a green jumpsuit, and sang Irish songs along with the record player all Saturday long. Continue reading “writing the truth” »
gnome army
Today was glorious in West Point, California. Clear skies, 74 degrees, no breeze. I spent the day using my wheel barrow, creating under a birch tree. I made a gnome army surrounded by cloud glazed tubes.
I cleared and raked the seventy square feet to lay down weed cloth, which I hope will eliminate unnecessary weed growth. Three trips to the hardware store and fifteen buckets of pea gravel, the space looks like a zen garden.
My gnomes are made out of plaster of paris, and I made ten successful ones from a plaster mold, until the casing for the mold disintegrated. The gnomes have lived around my studio for over five years. Some people love my gnomes, with a face like Savannah, Georgian, Johnny Mercer, my favorite lyricist who wrote the song Moon River. Some people really hate the gnomes and have told me that they are creepy.
They are now surrounded by bent and straight turquoise cylinders glazed with cumulus clouds and magenta interiors.
My interest in tubes goes back decades, because I’ve thought that humans are like tubes. We have these forms that can be straight or bent, and their fragile nature doesn’t last forever. Our spirits inherit these forms we live with on Earth. For me, the tubes are my artistic conception of our fragility and hilarity of our bodies. Tube forms crack me up, and I don’t take them seriously at all.
This blog isn’t intense, because it wasn’t an intense day, and the gnome garden will testify to my passions, regardless of whether or not anyone else thinks they are funny. I’m laughing.
I felt like was Miwok too
When my parents weren’t tanked, we had plenty of fun family times. We drove up to the Russian River and canoed around, carried kites and hiked up into Tiburon hills, straight up from our house, crossing rusty barbwire fences through pastures on the way. My father loved hiking, and we made up funny songs while we walked, poems and skits for each other, gut busting laughs. It almost seemed to make up for unpredictable drunk ugly. Continue reading “past changes” »