Please Don't Send in the Clowns

You know how one thing leads to another if you spend any unregulated time on the internet? Well, this morning my mind led me into the craziest side street. It started with Stephen Dunn, a fine poet whose work I've long admired, and because I ran across a poem by him involving a clown, I found myself thinking more than I really wanted to about them. Clowns have always creeped me out. I find nothing amusing about them. I have even wondered, what kind of a person becomes a clown? Who in their right mind would want to put on that crazy get-up and try to make kids laugh? And my mind can only fathom that it's someone who doesn't like being themselves. Someone who has something to hide. I'm telling you, I get the creepy-crawlies from them. And I know I'm not the only one.

If a clown had shown up at one of my birthday parties - and I use that term loosely because I don't recall any party, ever, and there would never have been enough money for a clown anyway, thank God - I would have wondered how much my parents really liked me. Did they harbor ill-will towards me? Was I secretly adopted, as I sometimes wondered anyway? It's not that they didn't acknowledge our birthdays, they did, and we received some fine presents - although nothing that would break the bank, they were still well-chosen - so worrying about a clown at my birthday party would have been akin to worrying about getting eaten by a shark when I'd never been anywhere near the ocean, but that didn't stop me from worrying about it. Maybe I should be more worried about run-on sentences.

Anyway, I ran across this poem by Stephen Dunn and it got me thinking, too much, and also raised a metaphor or two, possibly three. Maybe it's because the world seems a little crazy right now and ripe for these things and the whole clown thing made me even more aware of it. Is this about a kid's birthday party gone awry? Is this about a clown inexplicably emerging from the woods? I don't know for certain but if a clown emerged from my woods I'd run like hell. I wouldn't be offering him a ride to any birthday party. He'd have to hoof it on those ridiculously over-sized, floppy shoes of his. And why should the kid have to make nice just to cover for the angry parents? I'm telling you, it's all a bit unsettling. I suppose that's the point. See what you think.


"If a Clown"

If a clown came out of the woods,
a standard-looking clown with over-sized
polka-dot clothes, floppy shoes,
 a red bulbous nose, and you saw him
on the edge of your property,
there'd be nothing funny about that,
would there? A bear might be preferable,
especially if black and berry-driven.
And if this clown began waving his hands
with those big white gloves
that clowns wear, and you realized
he wanted your attention, had something
apparently urgent to tell you,
would you pivot and run from him,
or stay put, as my friend did, who seemed
to understand here was a clown
who didn't know where he was,
 a clown without a context?
What could be sadder, my friend thought,
than a clown in need of a context?
If then the clown said to you
that he was on his way to a kid's
birthday party, his car had broken down,
and he needed a ride, would you give
him one? Or would the connection
between the comic and the appalling,
as it pertains to clowns, be suddenly so clear
that you'd be paralyzed by it?
And if you were the clown, and my friend
hesitated, as he did, would you make
a sad face, and with an enormous finger
wipe away an imaginary tear? How far
would you trust your art? I can tell you
it worked. Most of the guests had gone
when my friend and the clown drove up,
and the family was angry. But the clown
twisted a balloon into the shape of a bird
and gave it to the kid, who smiled,
let it rise to the ceiling. If you were the kid,
the birthday boy, what from then on
would be your relationship with disappointment?
With joy?  Whom would you blame or extoll?


~ Stephen Dunn


The whole thing raises a lot of questions. Speaking strictly for myself: please, do not send in the clowns. No ventriloquist dummies, either.

Perhaps I should say, "Don't bother. They're here."

I'm New Here, Again

When Gil Scott-Heron passed on May 27th, I found myself in memory back on Guadalupe St. in Santa Fe: it's the summer of 2004, the elections are on everyone's minds and I'm planning to be down on the plaza that afternoon to hear Bill Clinton talk up John Kerry for president. Later that same summer, I'd see Kerry and shake his hand at the Borders there. I wasn't as much enamored of his candidacy - I saw it only as infinitely better than the alternative - as I was still grateful for his appearances way back in '71 as part of the Winter Soldiers who were working on an end to the Viet Nam War fiasco. For that, I would still shake his hand, no matter the controversy surrounding it. 

On this particular morning in 2004, for the first time in many years, I hear Gil's "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised,"  on the radio. It's one of those songs that instantly takes me back to a particular time and place. In this case, college, early '70's. Whatever his problems were over the years - and they seem to be centered on alcohol and drugs, as with many fine artists struggling to be heard in a world that appears to be in constant turmoil - there was something eminently likable about him. It also appears that towards the end of his life (he was only 62 when he passed), he had gained some measure of peace and understanding around the whole living thing. At least that's what I brought away from this video, his last.

It's titled, "I'm New Here." I like the message and I like that he's delivering it. The background video of him carrying flowers - gladiolas I believe - is a tribute in itself to where he was when he left us.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eV_astp3BjM

"Turnaround, turnaround, turnaround,
And you may come full circle
And be new here again."

Sunday Morning Coming Down

It's still early morning in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. Perhaps the morning mist is just starting to lift and the sun is barely peeking over the trees on the sharp edges of the rocky slopes. This is where Gary Snyder, poet laureate of my heart, still sleeps (I'm sorry, Mrs. Snyder, it's just a turn of phrase). Perhaps just now he's rustling into wakefulness, in his eighty some years of mornings. I hope he doesn't mind that I'm talking about him, here in my kitchen in Minnesota, second cup of coffee almost gone. You see, there were many things clamoring for my attention this morning, mostly things that really don't need my attention. I think the world needs something else from me. Maybe it needs me to remember that poetry exists. Maybe that's enough for today.

So I thought of you, Gary, there in the foothills, knowing you'd have something to take away this sense of despair that wants to impose itself, this roaming dismay with the world and its ways, all belief in anything but the good people do.

Here is what I found in this book that rests on my table, words of strange comfort on this first Sunday in August, with another haying yet to come.

"Hay for the Horses"

He had driven half the night
From far down San Joaquin
Through Mariposa, up the
Dangerous Mountain roads,
And pulled in at 8:00 a.m.
With his big truckload of hay
   behind the barn.
With winch and ropes and hooks
We stacked the bales up clean
To splintery redwood rafters
High in the dark, flecks of alfalfa
Whirling through shingle-cracks of light,
Itch of haydust in the
   sweaty shirt and shoes.
At lunchtime under Black oak
Out in the hot corral,
--The old mare nosing lunchpails,
Grasshoppers crackling in the weeds --
"I'm sixty-eight" he said,
"I first bucked hay when I was seventeen.
I thought, that day I started,
I sure would hate to do this all my life.
And dammit, that's just what
I've gone and done."

~ Gary Snyder



Photograph: Margaret Bourke-White

The title of this post is taken from a song written by Kris Kristofferson.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words

Photograph: Margaret Bourke-White, Breadline in Kentucky 1937
 


And the beat goes on....

I Can Resist Everything Except Temptation

Last week, while commenting on a blog, I insinuated that I was showing some restraint regarding the acquisition of new notebooks. Nay, 'twas not so. I just had not been out shopping in a while. When I leave home I spend money, some of it rather foolishly. So, I try to go with a list in my little traveling notebook. You know, the kind that are small, spiral-bound and could fit in a pocket or a purse. Sometimes, I even look at it while shopping. But then, I get side-tracked and the next thing I know something has found its way into my hand basket just when I thought I might get away scot-free. I suppose I should note here that notebooks are my weakness. Okay, okay, One of my weaknesses.

A few days ago, I went to check out the new grocery section at the Target store. I was very pleasantly surprised and so I justified my purchases because, well, it was food.  There was just one problem. Those fools put the paper goods section right next to the grocery aisles and there they were, at the end of an aisle where I could not miss them nor walk away without at least taking a look-see at the pretty covers. A gal can look, can't she?

Well, sure enough, three of them hopped in my basket and would not take no for an answer. They rationalized this by being clearly marked as eco-friendly. To wit: "greenroom" was their name, "made with paper containing 60-70% recycled fiber and printed with non-toxic soy-based ink." And only $2.00 each. As the Borg said to Captain Picard (wasn't he the sexiest thing?), "Resistance is futile."  This would not be the first time that statement has ricocheted through my feverish, infiltrated mind. Russell Wright dinnerware may or may not play a role here.

Anyway, a few minutes later I'm at the checkout and happy as can be with my little basket of temptations. Food and notebooks. Life's essentials.

 "I can resist everything except temptation."
~ Oscar Wilde, from Lady Windermere's Fan

My borderline bragging concerning restraint occurred at Alan Burnett's newsfromnowhere1948.blogspot.com

The Land Along the River

Sometime during the night I had a dream in which I was floating down a river in a very small wooden boat, the kind one might have taken into a duck blind, say about sixty years ago, not unlike the one turned upside down behind  our garage when I was growing up. Several people were in the boat with me, it was pretty crowded, but everyone was very quiet, there wasn't a sound. We just drifted down the river, which was really more of a creek. None of us had an oar or a paddle. I looked behind me and there were several more boats all floating down the river, very crowded boats, and no one had any paddles.

I was watching myself from a very short distance away, as I usually do in my dreams. Some aspect of myself was following the boat I was sitting in as it moved down the river. There was a green, grassy bank on both sides. It felt very peaceful, but yet, I knew something wasn't right. It was too quiet. Did any of us know where we were going?  It didn't seem so, but no one was talking. We were just silently drifting along.

I started looking around me, the me in the boat, and I realized that the water wasn't very deep, in fact, it was very shallow. I knew I could choose to step out of the boat whenever I wanted to. And so I did. I simply stood up and stepped out. I found myself standing in water that was just above my ankles. I stood there and watched boats go by me, no one said anything. I just watched them go down the river, boat after boat filled with people sitting quietly. The sun was shining, the sky was blue, everything appeared to be calm and peaceful. But, I still knew I didn't want to continue down that creek. Then I realized that the grassy bank along the river was just a few feet away. I could easily walk over to it and stand on the bank. And so I did. I walked over and stood on the very green grass just above the river. I stood there in the sunshine with a light warm breeze on my face as I watched the boats go by.

I thought briefly about why everyone was choosing to continue down the river without question when they, too, could get out of the boat they were in, walk over and stand on the bank.

Then, I found myself awake and at peace. The grass on my land along the river is very green.

But, I'm left wondering about the others still in the boats, still on the river, not questioning.

They're awfully quiet.  Too quiet.





Painting:  Harry Sutton Palmer (1884 - 1933).

Deja Vu All Over Again

It's the summer of 2005 and I'm visiting a friend, someone I've known for over twenty-five years. We had a relationship once upon a time. Twice upon a time, actually. We tried again, a dozen years after that summer of  '79.  Love doesn't conquer all.

We're sitting on his porch; the soundtrack of our lives is coming through the screen door behind us. We talk of books we've read, movies we've seen, crazy stuff that's happening in the world. He has a whiskey coke sitting next to him. I reach over once in awhile and, with his permission, take a sip. He always offers me a drink, I always say no, and then I always reach over and take a sip from his. It's just what we've been doing for a very long time.

Crickets are chirping in the grass as the moon comes up over the pines across the road. We sit and watch it rise. Creedence Clearwater Revival is on the radio, asking again and again,  "Who'll Stop the Rain?"  as time marches on. In large and small increments we watch it go, like a movie we saw years before, like a book we once read in school.

Now, it's getting very late. We're way past the whiskey, and it's time for me to go. We walk quietly down the steps, across his yard, and to the gate. He's walked me to this gate more times than it's possible to count. As I walk through I turn and, at the same time, we say to each other, "Deja vu all over again."

Here's John Fogerty and his song/video,  "Deja Vu All Over Again:"
http://www.youtu.be/I80W4SY3lqU


Maybe love does conquer all.

The Skeleton at the Feast

"Of the Seven Deadly Sins, anger is possibly the most fun. To lick your wounds, to smack your lips over grievances long past, to roll over your tongue the prospect of bitter confrontations to come, to savor to the last toothsome morsel both the pain you are given and the pain you are giving back - in many ways it is a feast fit for a king. The chief drawback is that what you are woofing down is yourself. The skeleton at the feast is you."

~ Frederick Buechner




Image: Salvador Dali, The Face of War

The Art of Becoming

Most folks in the so-called civilized world have probably become aware of Lascaux and Chauvet, caves in France, home to some amazing Paleolithic art. Chauvet is considered the oldest, with drawings dating back about 32,000 years. It is the oldest art known to man. They've always intrigued me and I've spent a fair amount of time looking at them and reading about them, mostly out of a desire to understand that impulse that drives people to create, to paint, specifically.

I've become very familiar with the petroglyphs and pictographs of the American southwest, having come across them numerous times on hikes in canyons and on drives along the Colorado River outside Moab, Utah. The cave paintings in France were a natural extension for me. The average person will never lay eyes on them, which is probably for the best, but there are some fine websites dedicated to educating people about them. The one I ran across today was intriguing in that it mentioned the documentary film by Werner Herzog, "Cave of Forgotten Dreams," which centers on Chauvet. I have not yet had an opportunity to see it, but I hope to remedy that soon. Here's a link to the Bradshaw Foundation site which has showcased them: http://www.bradshawfoundation.com/chauvet

What brought them to mind today was some photographs my friend and southwest hiking pal, JB, recently emailed to me. When I saw them, I immediately assumed they were from Chauvet. I drooled over them for a minute and then he sent a follow-up email telling me he had only the day before discovered them in a cave just outside Moab, Utah. Apparently, someone went in there to create copies of these paintings, even going so far as to use earth pigments for paint. This is a cave with many rooms that JB had explored before, so he feels they were done sometime in the past two years, since his last visit to the cave. They're remarkable replicas.

Ancient art and all that history, so very long ago, created by people like you and me, feeling the need to express themselves, to tell their stories and share their lives, to record the beauty they saw in the everyday. It's a world we create anew every time we tell our stories and share our lives, record the beauty we, too, see in the everyday. It's the ongoing story of Us.


Someday, we'll be the ancient ones.

These four photographs were taken by JB, in the cave outside Moab, Utah. He has not yet found any information about the artist who re-created these.

She Was Someone's Little Girl

Admonition to Myself

Yesterday the world seemed to be askew, tilted on its axis by all the troubling news from every corner. As the day wore on and my thoughts became more and more agitated I knew I had to go within for answers. These answers always come from a quiet place, from that still, small voice. I just have to remember to be still and listen.

This morning a book popped into my thought shortly after waking. I hadn't opened this book for a few months, but I felt certain I would find something to hang on to, something that would help me move into healthier thinking. I went to my bookshelves to retrieve it and then opened it to what feels like the perfect admonition to myself:


Thirty-Eight


Why scurry about looking for the truth?
It vibrates in everything and every no-thing, right off
    the tip of your nose,
Can you be still and see it in the mountains?   the pine
   tree?  yourself?


Don't imagine that you'll discover it by accumulating
   more knowledge.
Knowledge creates doubt, and doubt makes you
   ravenous for more knowledge.
You can't get full eating this way.
The wise person dines on something more subtle:
He eats the understanding that the named was born
   from the unnamed, that all being flows from non-
   being, that the describable world emanates from an
   indescribable source.
He finds this subtle truth inside his own self, and
   becomes completely content.


So who can be still and watch the chess game of the
   world?
The foolish are always making impulsive moves, but
   the wise know that victory and defeat are decided by
   something more subtle.
They see that something perfect exists before any move
   is made.
This subtle perfection deteriorates when artificial
   actions are taken, so be content not to disturb the
   peace.
Remain quiet.
Discover the harmony in your own being.
Embrace it.

If you can do this, you will gain everything, and the
   world will become healthy again.
If you can't, you will be lost in the shadows forever.

From Hua Hu Ching: The Unknown teachings of Lao Tzu, translation by Brian Walker.

Painting: "House on a Hill,"  by Winslow Homer

My Hand, Writing

You will need to click on this and then click again, if necessary, to enlarge it for reading.  After seeing this, I spent a minute or two cursing cursive, or what passes for it in my world.

Image: Cindy Sherman's photograph, Untitled #96, which recently sold at auction for $3.89 million. Yes, that's right, 3.89 million dollars, the most expensive photograph to date. Don't get me started....

Summertime and the Living is Easy?

Teresa here, reporting from the lower levels of hell, or perhaps I should say, the upper levels, as heat rises. I have never in all my borned days, as Festus used to say on Gunsmoke, endured such hellish conditions. The humidity has made the atmosphere even more rain foresty than it already was and the mosquitoes and bugs are making me long for the comforts of a "tiger cage" near a rice paddy in Viet Nam.  Too soon?  Maybe that will always be too soon.

I must say, though, when I walked out barefoot to my gardens this morning, to cut a fresh bouquet, hell never looked so good.

How it feels is another thing.

 Buddy's chillin'.

The Way It Goes

A couple of days ago, I heard Gillian Welch had a new album out. Finally. It's been something like eight years. So I started prowling around the internet this evening to find out what I could. I've always had a soft spot for anyone who sings in an Appalachian folk style with that old-timey, heartbreaking harmony. Whether they're from Appalachia or not. A few people through the years have added to this style quite nicely, but not many do it better than Gillian. Her new album is called, "The Harrow and the Harvest."  I'll tell you right now, not everyone will find this to their taste. It's a tad dark, but then, so is life sometimes. If a little dark doesn't sound inviting, I understand, but you'll be missing out on what I feel is some very fine harmonizing by two very fine musicians, singing about some very real people.

Here's Gillian Welch and David Rawlings with, "The Way It Goes."

Lyrics: http://sweetslyrics.com/885058.gillian

Have I Reached the Party to Whom I Am Speaking?

Did you ever watch Laugh-In?  It was a weekly television show in the late '60's to early '70's that featured several people who went on to become well-known comediennes and actresses. One of them was Lily Tomlin, one funny lady, who introduced a character she named Ernestine. Ernestine was a telephone operator dressed in clothes and with a hairstyle reminiscent of the late 1940's or early '50's. She snorted and dialed with a flourish, usually asking the party she had just reached, "Have I reached the party to whom I am speaking?"  I started many a phone call to a friend in that way and, depending on the call, still do to this day. Funny, how those things stick.

Anyway, at the time my own family was not far removed from the day in which we had replaced our oak box on the wall with black ear and mouth piece and a number that was "two longs and a short," with a black rotary dial phone that seemed like something out of science fiction. We thought we'd really moved up in the world as we no longer had the neighbors down the road listening in on our party line. We all had new numbers that started with nice words. Windsor Seven was ours, which had nothing to do with likker, Kimball Eight was to the south of us and folks to the north had numbers that started with Orchard Five. Heady times.

Let's zip ahead about forty years.

Just before we turned the corner into 2002 and shortly after I arrived in Santa Fe, I bought my first cellphone. I knew I'd be spending a fair amount of time on the road and it seemed like a good idea. I could appreciate the almost instantaneous connections it allows for and more than once it's come in very handy. Once, while returning some paintings to an artist who was up in Denver, I ran over something in the road which mangled my tire, and while I helped my car limp off the interstate, I was able to call on my cellphone, get a tow truck out to my location just outside Trinidad, Colorado, and get back on the road with a new tire all in just about an hours time, with no harm to my valuable cargo.

On a lesser occasion, my sister and I were able to find each other while shopping without having to walk from aisle to aisle with eyes peeled, but instead called and said something terribly erudite like, "I'll meet you up front."  Hey, it has its conveniences.

Having said that, and after almost ten years of having a cellphone exclusively, I've recently returned to using a land line. The local internet provider offered one for less than five extra dollars a month. I said yes. No, I didn't completely give up my cell, it will still be nice to have on the road when I travel, and I'm still using it for some long distance calls, but I gotta tell you, I'm loving the return to a land-based phone to match my more land-based life. It actually has a cord on it. And it feels so good in my hand and against my ear. It feels real. It feels solid. I can hold it between my ear and shoulder if I need to. I like that.

Maybe it just reminds me of what was, once upon a time, but I like the notion of heading back to the future, in more ways than one. I have a magnet on my refrigerator that says, "Sometimes, right back where you started from is right where you belong." The same could be said for many things, many aspects of our lives. I don't view it as going backwards, I view it as moving forward with all the good that existed then, and still exists. I aim to make that good not just a part of my life, but my life.

I can't explain it, but it feels really good. I feel liberated.

Dancing Around on the Soapbox of Hope

The other day, while returning from a days drive over to the far western part of the state, I drove by a section of road a few miles out of town where the landowner had posted a homemade sign stating, "Do not spray. Fruit Trees." I made a wish as I went by that those who worked for the state would appreciate this and listen.  I did not extrapolate with concern over my own wildflower strewn roadside; it didn't cross my mind that anyone would be down our township road to spray, or for that matter mow. How naive I can be.

The next evening the neighbor happened to call and mentioned that they often come by to spray or mow the roadside this time of year and would I mind if he put out a sign telling them not to do either along our road; between the road and my old fence line several wild flowers are in bloom, which enhance his walk to the mailbox.

Buddy and I have, also, been appreciating the changing wildflowers while on our walks. Earlier, several wild iris were along our regular route, not to mention the meadow full of buttercups. Now, there's a tangle of wildflowers that make the days feel sunny even when they're not.

By eight o' clock that evening the signs were in, one on each end of that stretch of road. I'm very grateful for his presence of mind and that he's lived on this road longer than I with an understanding of the possibilities. I would have been heartsick had they done either. Systems have a life of their own and often don't come with compassion or a love of wildness. I'd like to think that will change. I hope. 

Seeing these wildflowers gives you a sense of just how proliferative nature can and will be when left to her own devices.

A Grant Wood Kind of Day

For some reason, I'm thinking about Grant Wood this morning. Perhaps it's the way the light is falling on the slope of lawn outside my window, or the low rumble of farm machinery moving through the fields down the road in the first haying of summer, or maybe it's just the summer itself, with its green heat and thunderstorms in the night, that's bringing him to mind.

He's been one of my favorite artists for many years, going back to the mid-1980's when a retrospective of his work was making the rounds and getting a lot of press. I had known about his iconic painting, "American Gothic," forever, it seems, but becoming aware of his oeuvre made my appreciation of him run even deeper. There's something about the rolling hills and his somewhat idealistic vision of mid-western farm life that appeals to me.

He was born near Anamosa, Iowa, in the late 1800's, living on a farm during his early years. In his formative years as an artist, he lived a rather Bohemian lifestyle in Europe, studying art and discovering the direction towards which he wanted his work to develop.

He began to realize that for all Europe offered, there was incredible value and beauty in the place he was born. And so, he returned to his roots, this rural beginning. In doing so, he became a vital aspect to Regionalism as an art form, and helped to found the Stone City Art Colony during the Depression. He has been quoted as saying, "I realized that all the really good ideas I'd ever had came to me while I was milking a cow."

While familiarizing myself again with his story, I came across a website I found very appealing which gives an interesting account of his life, along with information on the art colony and a gallery showing some of his paintings. He identified strongly with his roots, adopting the habit of wearing overalls, often depicted as the quintessential garb of a farmer, even painting his self-portrait in them. One of the bits of information I found interesting was that in later years he painted his self-portraits with a v-necked shirt, replacing the overalls, perhaps in an attempt to be viewed as a more universal artist rather than a regionalist.

I think for most artists there's a need to not be pigeon-holed, but remain free to express themselves in whatever way they feel moved to do so. That might best be expressed in still life, or in portraits, perhaps even in a more abstract vision of life.

Grant Wood found himself in all of these, but it's his rounded, rolling views of the land that he has become most well-known for, and for that I'm glad. I like them.

If you'd like to check out that website: http://xroads.virginia.edu/~ma98/haven/wood/home.html