Weeds

"A weed is a plant that has mastered every survival skill

except for learning how to grow in rows."

-- Doug Larson

Wild violet (Johnny jump up) in the woods 5-4-14

"When weeds go to heaven,

I suppose they will be flowers."

-- L.M. Montgomery, The Story Girl

Wild vine in the woods 5-4-14

"Weeds are flowers too, once you get to  know them."

-- A.A. Milne

Dandelion in the woods 5-4-14

I spent the late afternoon yesterday, camera in hand, trudging through the woods. I went off-trail, up and down hills, dodging briers and low-hanging vines, searching for majesty.

The brooks were babbling. The birds were singing. Majesty was plentiful in the beams of a brilliant sun streaming down on me through the towering, leafless trees, illuminating the coming-alive-ness of the forest all around me.

I was looking for wildflowers, but mostly I found weeds.

Except for the May Apples and Jacks-in-the-Pulpits, the wildflowers were being shy. Apprehensive. After a hard winter, they weren't quite ready to stick their necks out just yet.

Not weeds. 

While the "real" flowers  were taking their sweet, timid time opening up, the weeds were growing happily and plentifully, running roughshod all over the forest floor,

Weeds are like Nature's little extroverts. Eager and unabashed. Not afraid to show their faces and shout "Look at me! Down here!"

Mother's day is coming, and for many, that means flowers. Some mothers will receive lovely, expensive bouquets and arrangements and hanging baskets purchased from the florist. Others will get last minute grocery store mums wrapped in cellophane. Some might get meticulously cultivated long stemmed roses, and others, tulips snipped from their very own landscaping.

But the luckiest mothers of all, I think, will be given fistfuls of battered dandelions and johnny jump ups, held forth proudly in grubby little bunches by beaming, grubby little children. 

A good mother will oooh and aaah over the loveliness of these "flowers" and carefully place them in Dixie cups on the kitchen windowsill and then dutifully water them like prize orchids. 

Her eyes may brim with tears, prompting the child to ask "Mommy, what's wrong? Don't you like them?" (translation: "Don't you love me?") And she will hug the child closely and confirm that she absolutely loves and adores both the flowers and the child, not minding (for once) the smear of dirty hand prints across her blouse, or the muddy shoe tracks across her gleaming kitchen floor.

She may secretly pop an extra Claritin or Benadryl to keep her allergies at bay. 

And in the future, she may feel a tiny ache in her heart each time the lawn chemical truck saturates the flawless green grass with weed-killer. In the future, no store-bought bouquet will ever mean as much. 

In the future, she may spend a late afternoon, camera in hand, trudging through the woods. And she may go off-trail, up and down hills, dodging briers and low-hanging vines, searching for majesty. 

And she will find it running roughshod all over the forest floor in the happy, plentiful, grubby little weed-faces stretching sun-ward.

Her eyes may brim with tears.  

 

A Rainy Day Project

"Save a boyfriend for a rainy day --

and another, in case it doesn't rain."

-- Mae West

Medusa, mixed media on canvas (detail) 4-18-14

My mom was fond of the saying "save it for a rainy day."

It could mean any of a number of things, but it usually didn't really have anything to do with rain. It was simply her way of saying "Put it off, Kid. Procrastinate. There'll be plenty of dark, dreary days in life. Learn to have fun while the sun's shining."

Or it could mean "Think it over. Be certain. Don't blow through that birthday cash until you know for sure what you want to spend it on."

Or it could mean, "I don't want to hear you complaining that there's nothing to do. Save it for a rainy day, so next time you're bitching about how bored you are you'll have options."

For me, artistically speaking, a rainy day project is usually something that requires multi-day patience, like glue or paint that needs drying time. It's usually something that can't be rushed, that I can leave and come back to and leave and come back to in between other projects -- that I can only do so much of before it has to rest. It could be a collage, or a painting, or a sculpture, or a  paper mache mask, or, in today's case, a mixed-media piece.

Medusa, mixed media on canvas 4-18-14

I've been poking and picking at this mixed media Medusa for several weeks. It was a way to use up a whole bunch of random, leftover art and craft supplies, like paper flowers, little plastic snakes and skulls, glitter, felt letters, a paper butterfly, acrylic paint, spray paint, a mesh citrus bag, some stickers.

I have to say, I find all of these bits and pieces much more compelling now that they're freed from their drawer and assembled together. And I actually did have some rainy days to work on her. And some windy days. And some snowy days. And some windy/rainy/snowy days.

Anyway, it's been a while since I've made a Medusa.

It was good to see her face again.

Re-Emerging

"This world is clearly emerging before our eyes.

The shifts ahead, the opportunities ahead are massive."

-- Carly Fiorina

Tulip sprouts 3-21-14

"We all hope for breakthrough rebirth moments."

-- Dane Cook

Tulip sprouts (2) 3-21-14

"You raze the old to raise the new."

-- Justina Chen, North of Beautiful

Tulip sprouts (3) 3-21-14

A year ago at this time I was in a dark and scary place.

I'd kind of dropped out of my life. I'd gone underground, buried beneath the pressing weights of insomnia, anxiety and depression.

I'd stopped doing some things that, until then, had been very important parts of who I am. Most notably, I'd stopped acting.

In addition to my 365 days projects, I am also an actor. Theater mostly. But performing on stage and auditioning for roles, in my then-current condition, was out of the question.

In the last show I did, I was so exhausted and sleep deprived that I forgot my lines onstage more than once, which is definitely not something I am used to. During a scene in the show before that, my persistent facial spasm went apeshit and the other actor zeroed in on it, and it totally threw him off his game. In the green room afterwards, he teased me about it and I tried to play along with the joking, but it hurt. A lot.

I do most of my work an hour away in Cleveland, and there were nights I drove to and from rehearsals after 36 hour stretches of zero sleep, nights when I had no fucking business being behind the wheel of a car.

It all scared the shit out of me. It left me snake bit, gun shy, and super skittish about wanting to try again too soon, if at all.

The thing that scared me most, though, was how easily I was able to let go. I was growing ever more lackadaisical and apathetic about something that had once been a driving force and a passion. I didn't give a fuck. And even if I wanted to give a fuck, I didn't have a fuck to give. The passion, the drive, the hunger, the need -- vanished.

I was honestly starting to doubt whether I'd ever get back on the horse.

But yesterday I got a sensation that something was stirring again -- struggling to break the surface and re-emerge after its long, hard, dark dormancy.

I went on my first audition in almost a year and a half.

I think I did OK. I felt good about it. I was rested, calm, confident. The atmosphere felt familiar and right. My facial spasm was wonderfully obedient.

And whether I get the job or not is beside the point. The important thing is that I did it. I showed up. I went. I tried. I pushed back up through the packed earth and peeked out at a world I feared I'd never see again.

Guess what? It's still there.

So am I.

Playing Make-Believe

"They spent the first three years of school getting you to pretend stuff

and then the rest of it marking you down if you did the same thing."

-- Margaret Atwood, Oryx and Crake

Butterfly on flowers (spray paint on paper with pipe cleaner stems) 3-7-14

"Leaving the world of reality behind 

and disappearing into a world of make-believe and imaginations, 

is a solace you get from nothing else."

-- Sanhita Baruah, Uff Ye Emotions

One of the things I'm most grateful for in life is that at the ripe old age of 46, I still have custody of my robust, little kid imagination.

Paper, paint and pipe cleaners may be the standard art supplies of preschools everywhere, but that shouldn't make them off limits to big kids.

So yesterday I built a little world with them and, using my camera as an imaginary portal, took a brief vacation there.

And even though the big round thermometer on the fence says it's 25 degrees outside, and even though  the ground is still covered with snow and all the growing things are held captive by frost, inside my imagination it's sunny and warm, and the flowers are blooming and the butterflies are flitting.

I took this picture during my visit, just in case you don't believe me.

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Which brings us the One Good Thing "Plea On Behalf of Imaginative Children Everywhere":

Please don't ever, ever, tell a child that they should stop pretending, or day-dreaming, or making-believe, or living in a fantasy world. Sure, children's imaginary lives are sometimes inconvenient for grownups to deal with. They can even be a little bit scary. But instead of fighting them, next time try spending the same amount of energy indulging them, or just leaving them the fuck alone. And for chrissakes please, pleeease, pleeeeeeease don't ever tell a child to be more like the other kids. Same old, same old children grow up to be same old, same old adults. And Lord knows the world has enough unimaginative, boring grown-up drones trudging around staring at their phones all damn day. Being a responsible grownup does not mean you can't still have an active, colorful imagination. It just makes being a responsible grownup so much more interesting and way more entertaining.

I once heard that children don't necessarily remember what you say to them, but they never forget how you make them feel. And if you make a child feel stupid, or flawed, or deficient, or pressured, or unacceptable, or unloved simply because you don't understand or won't understand their imaginary tendencies, then shame, shame on you.

Go ahead, spend your life like Sisyphus with your head down, eternally pushing a boulder up a hill. That's your boring choice.

As for me, when I exit this life, I'd rather go out like Icarus -- in a blinding flash, harnessed to a pair of homemade wings that I built out of art supplies, believing I might really touch the Sun.