An Afternoon

The back door slams and you call ‘sorry’ over your shoulder, running across the cold old grass of a backyard behind a brown farmhouse standing crouched with age in the lee of the hill. A hill covered with trees in shades of autumn, maples flaming orange and yellow in the dull of an overcast November day. You run fast enough that you cannot be expected to hear anyone calling you back for the never-ending list of chores. Today, pail in hand, is the right day for this task in the late ancient part of the year.

The air has a sharp tang of end of season, enough bite to make your nose run.  A complex toasted scent of leaves rises from the fallen layers underfoot. The sun peeps past an edge of cloud, then a thick gray draws in again. A flurry of crows rise calling against the sky. Passing warm and cold currents of air trade turns pushing against you as you mount the hill into the orchard and head down the long slope between the harvested apple trees, each naked tree twisted and shaped by its individual history of spring rains and summer drought, squirrels and the voices of the men come to pick in early fall telling stories over sandwiches.

A bit over two miles from the farmhouse a forest waits, its edge of beech trees and conifers, old maples clustered with the patchy leaf hues of yellow and orange bright against dark green clumps of pine and juniper. A path, nearly invisible, leads between ponderous trunks, and a squirrel knocks twigs as he flees, scolding. You can see how the faint signs of foot wear run alongside then over the tumbled granite boulders of a wall some other long ago farm grew. A mile more, perhaps, though it always feels a longer distance through trees on a ragged path, before you turn down, following the descent of the tree-thronged land. Before you now the forest changes, opening to the sky and standing gray; most of the leaves in this area have fallen and there’s only a scatter of swamp maple red and pink, echoing the lower cast sprinkle of bright blueberry leaves.

            The ground is no longer dead leaves and earth, but confused bare brush and twigs catching your feet. This is where you leave the path, you must pick your way through and around the gray trunked maples, which as you progress, grow thin. Few branches reach overhead now. The brush seems more like deep lichen, and your feet sink, the footing becoming more awkward as though its softness pulls. Here in the autumn bog, trees are few and those around you seem young, as though something in this place forbade any of them growing past a certain age.

 The very light feels different, pale, the colors alien and lavender hazed. Yet looking around, you are in the open, so why does this secret place feel so very magically strange? Watching you, as though it has been waiting for someone to come.

You see the first dark red gleaming, kneel down and gently tug the first cranberry into your grasp. You squint, peering around. Then in a flicker, the cranberries seem suddenly numerous as though that first sighting gifted you with the trick of seeing them. All shades of pink and cream and dark dried-blood vermillion. This is why you have come, and as you kneel and gather, tugging the round firm berries from their filamentous moorings, the wet of the bog hidden under all the ages of layered moss slowly seeps through your stout jeans. The very birds seem silenced, and there is only a low murmur of wind, and the rattle of the berries gathering in your metal pail.

Your great uncle brought you here ten years ago, to gather Thanksgiving cranberries. It was a secret, he said. This was our own bog, not enough to harvest for sale, but enough for a family. Inside the purple-gray bowl of sphagnum, a man stays hidden from the rest of the world, even from a hunter out for his family’s deer. The moss underfoot and under knee, might be hundreds of years old, or thousands. Perhaps the Indians of this area, the Abanaki, had come here as you do. Likely enough, he said, nodding.

He died years ago, but you remember the way. It’s a slow pick, to gather enough cranberries for a sauce, but when you pause and feel the November air on your face, and feel the deep dank chill of the bog on your legs and hands, it could take forever and would still seem right. This place with its mysteries could enfold a person and hold them away from the world. How would you know that minutes changed and moved while you stood here?

You whisper, because this is a place for whispers. Gray whispers that might move not only through the air but through time itself, and bring one of those rare smiles to his furrowed face.

“Uncle Ben. I came. Happy Thanksgiving.”

I’d like to see you if you’re in town…

I remember watching our child start to walk and being impressed that the effort was only a barely controlled fall. Is that significant and profound? Possibly both. I suspect we think that everyone except ourselves and our loved ones has a steady beat to their steps, all purposes clear and the whole coordination of walking, in the bag. And I think that’s a fallacy– we are all in a controlled or not so controlled fall. It is good for our humility to remember that, but all it really takes is one stumble, or one patch of ice or an unperceived branch, and we are brought to the literally hard realization that no… what we are doing is not carefully planned, but an approximation.

Speaking of stumbles and surprises, I had a weird day, culminating in receiving a bill for Emergency Room services. The local hospital says my mother incurred these charges, but that the insurance didn’t go through. The bill is due. The charge isn’t so very terrible, about $450. My husband and I started immediately to make jests about how it was my mother teasing us by returning, not simply from hospice for the fifth time, (because yes, she walked right out of hospice four times before the final one…) but actually returning from the dead. I am awaiting her knock on the door. 

I’ll have tea ready and some applesauce cake.

But yes, we realize that this may indicate that someone who knew where she used to live is trying to use her name to cover their ER visit. Or, of course it could be a clerical error. After poring through the not very clear pages of the bill I came to the realization that they think she was at the ER on December 21st, 2023. If so, she really does owe us a visit! After all, my mother moved from here in fall, 2007, to live near my sister in Washington state, and died there in 2016. That’s a bit of a while ago. So the uneasy part of this is who knew enough but not too much, that they tried to scam the hospital using her name and address, and what new thing will come next? Yes, I’ll be on the phone to the hospital tomorrow.

The part of my mind that loves the fantastic makes me wonder if she’ll want us to apologize for keeping her ashes (or at least some of them,) in the house with us. But I know better. She’ll only call me silly and pinch my cheek just a little too hard, as she liked to do when there was an edge to her comment.

First day

I find it profoundly moving that this day is the anniversary of Lincoln signing the Emancipation Proclamation. I hope each of you has had the experience of seeing the fictionalized but profoundly satisfying movie ‘Lincoln’ which gives a certain narrative structure to an event that I believe had cohesion in Lincoln’s own mind long before its realization, even while the chaos and disruptions of the wartime and all its currents of political contention obscured this purpose. Yet it came to pass, and he inked his name upon the document, and if he were remembered for little else but what has been called this “bill of lading”, it is a worthy thing!

It is another cold silent night, and I hope for better sleep than last night, when I came awake inopportunely for several hours, unaccompanied by the usual call of owls. There is an interesting sense to those nights, no anxiety, though in small waves comes an impatience concerning the waste of good potential sleep time, a sense of suspension and an opportunity to think deeply. Do I? Think deeply? Hardly. I figure out what I want to eat for the next day’s dinner, and I wonder if it is worthwhile mending a sock. How I wish such nights brought insight into the nature of mankind, or even the answer to what is the ultimate ice cream sundae!

I remember a fellow freshman at college saying with her signature curling sly smile, that ice cream was good for the soul. A bad exam? Ice cream. Didn’t get the class you wanted? Ice cream with caramel sauce and whipped cream. I looked her up on line yesterday and found out that she followed her heart’s desire and got a Masters in Fine Arts and she’s now at one of the great museums on the East Coast. She is doing just fine, and I am heartened to know it.

So who are we, between Lincoln and my friend? None of the above or below, doing piece by piece what we can, making the creation of a life day by day. Strong shadows and bright curves of light, and the strange muddling in between. I am thinking so much these days as I try to imagine the next show of paintings which do not yet exist, a show which will be upon me all too soon, and I want to say something. What, you ask, what would you want to say in your work, and I can only blurt “An ice cream sundae, with caramel sauce and fudge and whipped cream.” If that is the best we can do– well, I know of worse.

Off I go to dream, perhaps of sundaes and socks, and maybe an echo of Lincoln talking half to himself, as he wanders the shadowy corridors of the old White House, his tatty shawl drawn up over his shoulders and his bowed unbrushed head heavy with thoughts that will not let him sleep. We are more fortunate than him, but I follow him in dreams some nights, and I wonder if there might be a leftover drift of strong minds leaving currents in our air– this air that we assume is only worth our breathing, and no more.

Add a chewing noise

Here we have entered the short days of the year, with the studio feeling rather chilly but always welcoming. I went in this morning to see whether I might find inspiration in the strong colors of our shadows to make a new painting, and poked around a bit.

But wait…what was that mess of trash on the floor right under the table easel? (And my table easel is five feet wide by three deep, so it is a big item indeed.) There were bits of paper, and some fluff and a batch of pencils and a pen. Brushes, on the floor? Hey, what were my erasers doing over on the other side of the rug? And what’s that by the base of my chair, a palette knife? I am not that careless, really. I picked these items up, but I had this feeling, and it wasn’t a good feeling. I pulled out the long drawer in the front of the table easel and… yuck. Yuck. There were shreds of drying fruit, feijoas and apples, a number of gnawn walnut shells. There were several more pencils and some bits of colored chalk, and items I didn’t recognize.

I realized that to get to the bottom of this, I must take down the seven foot wide painting on the table easel and winkle myself around behind the table part of the easel (which is set at a near-vertical angle) to see what might be seen. I was convinced I had tree rats, (pack rats, trade rats, dusky-footed woodrats– best known as Neotoma fuscipes.) I fetched a stool, a long grabbit reacher tool, pulled on my gloves and put on my face mask. Wriggling into position, I was flabbergasted.

Yes, some little furry had been making a nest behind my easel, but that’s not all. I saw an unsheathed x-acto knife in the mass, its triangular blade shining. Metal items, tin foil. There were perhaps a dozen brushes– maybe more (more turns out later, to be correct, as I disassemble the nest.) Sticks, shredded old gallery invitations, several palette knives of varied morphologies, paper clips and bulldog clips. Two small tubes of paint. Gloves, some chewed, some intact.

It was just a few days ago that I wanted to put numbers on the backs of some new paintings and was wondering how on earth I had mislaid my Sharpie markers. It was just a day ago that I wanted to take a stray brush bristle out of a wet painting, but could not locate my tweezers. Hadn’t I had three sets?Was it my aging inattention that had mislaid these? Nope. Our friend the woodrat had taken them. Three new Sharpies lolled in the nest. Four sets of tweezers.

Now the last time I had a rat nest in the studio, twenty years ago, I had one that held a wrist watch, some plastic beads and more than forty push pins. I’d been impressed then, however the magnitude and imagination of today’s discovery was way more ambitious.

Then I saw something that made me stare.

A memory stick. Now in this modern world there is little so alarming as the imagined theft of your memory. With fresh urgency I used my grabbit to start retrieving my stuff and disassemble the nest.

Taking a break after a first armload of trash and gnawings had been carefully extracted and bagged, I noticed the little glass bowl in which I put my memory sticks. I’d been sitting in the studio writing during nanowrimo (National Novel Writing Month) and thus had a handful of memory sticks I’d been using– some with data or ideas I’d had, but most of them with novel scraps and one with a major body of work– over 60,000 words of the new novel for this year. You know, there are many writers who worry that someone might steal their magnum opus. I’ve never worried before because every writer I know only cares about his or her or their own novel , not anyone else’s. I stand corrected. Now… after years of insouciance, I have cause to worry. There was not one single solitary memory stick left in that blessed glass bowl.

By the time this long truly dreadful job was done, I rescued ten memory sticks from the rat’s clutches. Are there some still missing?

You know, my aging brain has decided to plead the fifth. Scarlett, we’ll think about it tomorrow.

Viral load

I am simply not accustomed to the insults and vexations of being sick. I think this cold I picked up, most likely from a doorknob at the vet’s office, has really kicked the stuffing out of me and I am surprised and disappointed that having a number of years off without even a sniffle to trouble me, did nothing to make me able to suffer the slings and arrows of stuffy nose, cough and wretched sleep better than I have!

Clearly it is a character flaw. I told many a friend that it wasn’t a bad virus, and when I did my COVID tests, all those were negative. I masked when anywhere near other people, and managed to keep from seeing anyone close up. But here I am after my eleven days of misery, only now really beginning to feel as though the virus is reluctantly getting the idea that it can no longer drag its feet through my brains.

And worst of all, this is NANOWRIMO! National Novel Writing Month! If you who have been visiting this blog over the years remember, November is the month in which we who want to get some major writing done, plan to produce 50,000 words of a new work by the end of the 30th. I have managed this many years, and been very pleased by the results. Last year’s novel is actually out in submission– a novel that’s a memoir that never happened. I’ll explain that some other day.

But I refuse to give up. In spite of the loss of days, I still hope to catch up. After all I have a cat. If I can only train him to do upon command what you see in this photo– when he lies on the keyboard he’s a really effective assistant who adds loads of words to my word count!

A gathering of friends

Spent time this summer on the East Coast with a group of friends from college. Not like a college reunion, but something far more intimate and powerful and with the hidden magic of not being a batch of friends from one year’s graduating class alone. Indeed, four of us came from one class, two each from two other years, and I was the sole representative of my class. This is what colleges and Universities miss when they set up reunions. I suppose, due to logistics, that the university has to schedule by the class. But those formal reunions don’t cut it.

We left our spouses at home, and any kids who might still be about. This was our time, when we could truly pay attention to each other.

We have all become adults more or less, though a lot of time together was spent teasing, recalling old tricks and making up new ones. (Think of mature ideas, like substituting burlap for a friend’s towels in her bathroom.) We also spent hours talking over the extreme range of experiences the intervening years between our graduations and this summer brought. We graduated in the 1970’s and early 1980’s, so a respectable amount of time has passed. A range of careers, marriage and children if they happened, we talked over all the apparently simple things that make up living.

But the reason I write of this isn’t to share the particulars of my own friend group. I want to make a case for you considering meeting up with your past, if you haven’t for a while. I’m humbled and delighted by the company of these friends, and the time we have managed to share, helps and supports us all. I hope you can have a like experience.

Credit and cash

My father opened a bank account for me when I was first earning money in the fields and orchards harvesting fruit and pollinating the crops to yield seed for sale. I was fifteen.

 Women I knew, as I reached adulthood, didn’t have credit cards. If their husbands trusted them, some few had checkbooks, but I knew a good number who only used cash. Doled out once a month by husband or father.

First time I stayed in a hotel by myself, I pre-paid by mailing the office a check. I was a freshman in college then, in 1975. I never had a credit card until I was twenty five or six (yes–I worried about the temptation to spend money I didn’t have.) But I remember an older woman, a Researcher of rank at Yale University who was refused a car rental at her destination in the Mid-West because she had no credit card…only a checkbook, her ID and driver’s license. The year was 1983. What shape is your money? With money goes power.

 My father was a very different person than his peers. In this time, 2023, with deep thankfulness, we have actually come to a very different world than I was born into, and I am glad, but progress is slow, and there is always a group that you cannot haul into the future just because the future has arrived.

There is a large population of women out there who still do not control their own bank accounts, have no credit or credit cards, and many find the prospect threatening and awful because they have been taught from birth that they are not capable. That it is easier and better to not be responsible for such challenging and venial things.

We wonder why so many women vote against their best interests? It’s because they have nowhere else to go.

They have not yet imagined it. They do not nurture their future; they do not see their present.

coming back to it

The encouraged quietude of the COVID years has led me to stay hushed, waiting for some unknown but desired resolution. I have written little in this public journal, only a few bits on work and the care of our cats. I’ve had shows of paintings, written several new manuscripts, engaged in a range of gardening, public service and amusements with books read and music studied, and one book in preparation by my gallery, Robin Gowen, Light and Shadow, on my painting career to date. I’ll share a note on that later, as the publication date nears. There is a difficulty in coming back to this journal-like work again. I believe all of us feel it, and it makes what seems on the surface a simple task, anything else. Indeed, how many times do you have the intention to write that letter or that newsy email, and then you do all the other things, instead. Out of a busy life with stories to tell, work to paint, the needs of others you must serve… while all these are true needs too, you need to overcome reticence and speak. If not, you never know what time it is until it is too late.

Painting surfaces and how to prep them

My painting surfaces come in two flavors – canvas and Masonite.  The former is generally for smaller works up to 2’ x 3’ or thereabouts, while canvas is used for larger works. This is for two reasons, First, the upper side of Masonite offers a very even surface allowing for (where I so desire) fine detail work and smooth bold planes of color. The textures of canvas by contrast, can obscure detail, and reflectivity is broken up by the subtle effect of the cloth.  Beyond that, we have found that large sheets of Masonite can warp over time, and in our experience, bigger paintings are better done on canvas stretched over ¼” plywood.

In both cases (Masonite and plywood) the process starts off by deciding with sizes and proportions I desire for the work.  My husband then cuts the Masonite / plywood out to the chosen sizes using both hand-held saw and a table saw.

The larger Masonite units are then cradled with  ¾” x 1” strips of clear pine, that are glued to the back (rough side) of the Masonite, and the edges of the cradling trued with the margins of the board. Smaller pieces (less than ~ 12” on one axis) are left un-cradled as they are stiff enough and won’t deform over time.

For larger (say 3’ x 3’ or larger up to my big 7’ x 4’ pieces) my husband cuts a 4×8’,  ¼” plywood , sheet to size and again glues 3/4” x 1 ½” pine cradling to the back surface, often with 2 or more cross braces as well as corner braces for stiffness. We then cut out a piece of canvas that is a foot or so larger than the dimensions of the supporting board and “stretch” it across the board. This involves centering the board on the canvas and then stapling alternate sides of the canvas to the cradling on the back, with an eye to the threads. This is a two-person process as one person needs to pull on the canvas to ensure its tautness as the other is stapling. We start at the center of the long axis and work to the two ends, being careful to create no folds or creases in the canvas and no unfortunate diagonal stresses. The threads should run parallel to the edges of the board. The process finishes with a meticulous folding of each corner, tucking and trimming the intersecting long and short axes of the canvass into a neat bundle & stapling it out of the way.

Whether board or canvas, the next step is to cover the surface with a time-honored substance – gesso. This is composed of paint pigment (generally white, but it can be tinted, though too much tint can compromise a painting’s longevity,) chalk and a binder (originally rabbit-hide glue, now synthetic.)  This serves two purposes. First it provides a consistent surface for the paint to adhere to. Second, properly applied, it creates an extremely durable and stable skin that potentially can outlast the life of board or canvas beneath it. In fact, museum conservators count on this, and centuries-old paintings have been “restored” after the canvas or wood they were on rotted away – this by the process of floating the painting on its gesso base off the old surface and on to a new one.

So, how does one establish this gesso base? We set up a bunch of saw horses covered with sheets of  ¾” ply in the car port and put the boards/stretched canvases on them. I get out a sander (in my case a half sheet oscillating pad sander with 80 grit paper) and sand the surface of the board or canvass until a good tooth is raised. I then brush off the loose material and use a roller to apply the first coat of gesso. This is allowed to dry completely, and then sanded smooth. This is repeated five times until I deem the gesso surface thick enough to carry the work, and the feel of the surface is like kidskin, smooth enough to paint. However sometimes I will deliberately use a large brush on the last layers to give myself a different kind of surface to paint upon. Fully dried and after one last sanding, the boards go into storage in the studio to await inspiration.

Here’s a load of boards after I’ve put paintings on them and am waiting for the gallery to come by and pick the next show.

March is Green

Here’s the sequence– I used a blue chalk for my sketch on my home-prepared canvas (five layers of gesso with sanding in between and at the finish.) After I reached this point I paused and decided that the detail of the little dark cattle trails on the green slopes was a distraction, so I painted them all out. But it is rather fun to see them and imagine the cattle slowly making their way through and over this richness of spring grazing.