To The Lighthouse

"So fine was the morning except for a streak of wind

here and there that the sea and sky looked all one fabric."

-- Virginia Woolf, To The Lighthouse

Huron Lighthouse 12-14-14

"He heard her in his heart -- whispering from the mist."

-- John Geddes, A Familiar Rain

There is a lighthouse in my town.

It's a perfectly fine, serviceable lighthouse situated on the south shore of Lake Erie at the mouth of the Huron River. It is a functioning lighthouse that guides pleasure boaters and fisherman into the local marinas, and giant freight ships to the limestone plant.

Our lighthouse is kind of an icon around here. It shows up in logos. Businesses use it in their advertising. The Chamber of Commerce pimps it out in brochures and shit like that. Tourists take pictures of it. Local artists paint it. Blah, blah, blah.

I used to go running out on the elevated cement walkway that leads to the lighthouse from the shore. But it's been years since I went out there for a look.

No reason, really. I haven't been avoiding the lighthouse. I haven't been shunning it. I just don't think about it.

Some people go all gaga for lighthouses. They paint pictures of lighthouses and photograph lighthouses and embroider lighthouses onto sweatshirts.

I don't know. I guess I'm kind of over it. I'm pretty fucking blasé about lighthouses. If you've see it once, you've seen it a million times, right? Do I really need to see it again?

From an artistic subject matter standpoint, lighthouses seem too predictable, too sentimental, too obvious.

Anyway, yesterday I said "fuck you" to my cynical lighthouse apathy, turned left instead of right, and walked to the damn lighthouse. I even took some pictures.

The cold air and the mist felt good on my skin.

The solitude of being out there where nobody else was felt good in my soul.

The lighthouse looked decidedly lovely through the camera's lens.

It was one of those drizzly, monochromatic days, where everything goes all soft and misty. A day rendered in gray tones. Like England.

There were tons of screaming, squawking seagulls flying around lending dynamic movement to the otherwise static nature of the scene.

There was texture. There was atmosphere.

I don't mind saying I got kind of into it. I was out there shooting photos until my fingers went numb and I had to put my mittens back on.

Walking back towards shore, I realized that even though I've seen the lighthouse and multitudinous images of it, I have never seen it through my own camera's lens.

I've seen other people's images, but never made my own.

It opened my eyes and gave me a fresh perspective on what I thought was a stale, tired old subject.

It's a good thing I made that left turn.

A Portrait Of The Artist

"It's important to let your subjects be themselves."

-- Herb Ritts

Mackenna 12-8-14

"Your subjects have had a history --

try to reveal it in your picture."

-- Howard Pyle

"Why not use other art as a subject of art?"

-- Gail Cadnuff-Nash

I've been taking senior portraits for Mackenna.

Mackenna is Leo's girlfriend. But that's not all that she is. Being my son's girlfriend is just one small slice of who Mackenna is. And I, for one, strongly believe that it's not fair to always define a person by a single relationship that they have with another person.

I also strongly believe that there are a multitude of ways to do portraiture that have nothing to do with the subject's face. 

Mackenna is more than just a girlfriend. She's a dancer, a scholar, a reader, a scientist, a musician, a daughter, an artist, and most of all, she is herself. 

So it was no surprise that she wanted to attempt an unconventional senior portrait that encompassed more than just her lovely face. It didn't include her face at all, in fact.

Quite some time ago she described her idea to me, so it's been tumbling around in both our imaginations for a while now.

Yesterday the lighting was right, we both had time, I'd scouted a good location, and so we let the idea out.

Mackenna gathered some of her favorite things -- her pointe shoes, her violin, the books that mean the most to her. 

I grabbed my camera and tripod and lenses. 

Leo came along as driver, and muscle, to carry Mackenna across the muddy ground so she wouldn't get her toe shoes dirty. 

Together we three braved the cold of a chilly December afternoon to capture this portrait.

It was a group effort, but I think the result is singularly personal -- a portrait that is almost a still life of sorts -- a portrait of a life that is very much in motion.

It always makes me nervous to try and translate someone else's artistic idea.

I hope I did good.

Found Objects

"Did you find anything special," Blackie asked.

T. nodded. "Come over here," he said, "and look."

-- Graham Greene, Shock!

Found pink rubber bracelet 11-30-14

"And isn't the whole point of things -- beautiful things -- 

that they connect you to some larger beauty?"

-- Donna Tartt, The Goldfinch

On the windowsill in my mudroom is a collection of random objects.

A purple plastic magnetic number "2." A small wiffle ball. A feather. The plastic trailer from either a toy train or a toy truck advertising Leikeim (a German brewery) "Limonaden" (lemon soda). A miniature bobble-headed toy cat.

I found each of these things on my walks. 

I often find interesting things on my walks, sometimes on bike rides. 

Lost things.

Discarded things.

Fallen objects.

Sometimes I pick these fallen objects up and put them in my pocket and bring them home. Yesterday was particularly bountiful. By the time I returned home, I had a pocketful, and a handful. It was like a treasure hunt.

In a four-mile trek around my town I'd found:

a deflated balloon bouquet
a rusty razor blade
a cheap silver bracelet
a broken rubber bracelet
a rock painted pink
a theater ticket
a pinwheel
a gold star
an Easter egg

Sometimes I photograph the objects. Some I photograph here at home. Others I leave where they are and return later to photograph them in situ.

Yesterday's collection got me thinking.

I've been on the fence about whether I want to do a 365 days project for 2015. Mostly because I've been waiting for an idea to strike, an idea compelling enough to get me excited about sustaining my streak for yet another year.

I think I found it.

I found it in the stuff I found. 

I was photographing this dirty, broken pink cancer awareness bracelet imprinted with the word "strength." It's just cheap rubber. A bit of trash. Found on a roadside. Nothing special. Broken. Useless. 

But the image of it struck me as somehow lovely. Beautifully tragic. Ironic and incongruous. Hopeful? Hopeless? All of the above. I look at it now and this simple, fallen object tells a story.

Artists make art from found objects all the time. (It's the best kind of recycling. It's also a helpful way to clean up the neighborhood.) So for next year, I think maybe that's what I'll do. 

Who knows? It might be a good idea.

Look out for fallen objects!

A Good Warm Hat

"My ears were nice and warm, though.

That hat I bought had earlaps in it, and I put them on --

I didn't give a damn how I looked."

-- J.D. Salinger, The Catcher In The Rye

Self portrait 10-22-14

"If you don't have a hat on, you lose heat through your head,

just as you would lose heat through your legs if you were wearing shorts."

-- Richard Ingebretsen, MD, PhD, 

"Do We Really Lose Most of Our Heat Through Our Heads," WebMD

"Girl With the Pearl Earring," Vermeer

If you have super short hair like me, then you know how unsettling it feels when winter starts creeping up your neck.

I was out doing some running around yesterday, and I hadn't worn a hat. It was super windy, and super cold, and, well, winter was starting to creep up my neck.

It was unsettling.

I stopped at the sporting goods store to buy a kettlebell, and I saw this super warm, super cozy hat.

I bought it and put it on.

It felt super good.

(P.S. Is it just me, or does this self portrait have a li'l "Girl With the Pearl Earring" vibe? Except not at all.)

Junk

"One man's trash is another man's treasure

is a third man's raw materials for their

planet-buster earthquake machine."

-- Seanan McGuire, Deadline

Rusted Chevrolet hood 10-5-14

"To invent, you need a good imagination

and a pile of junk."

-- Thomas A. Edison

Rusted Chevrolet hood 10-5-14

In my travels hither and thither, I see lots of interesting shit that might be classified as junk.

But to my eye, old junk is often a whole lot more interesting than shiny new, pristine perfection.

Every day I ride my bike past this house that sits alone on a road with nothing else going on but corn and soybeans growing in fields.

There is always something intriguing sitting in the driveway or the front yard of this house -- bits and pieces of dismembered cars, motorcycles, trucks.

But it's not trash.

Whoever lives at this house is a wiz at re-configuring the dismembered members into one-of-a kind hot rods and choppers.

The house is surrounded by huge containers and a couple of out-buildings covered in old rusty fuel station signs and Coke advertisements.

But it's no junkyard. The place is meticulously kept. The yard recently mowed.

This old Chevrolet car hood has been catching my eye for the last little while. So yesterday after my bike ride, I drove back out with my camera.

Not wanting to trespass or draw the attention of the two dogs I've seen rambling around the place, I stayed in the road at the end of the driveway. A few clicks later, a bearded, gruff, not-too friendly sounding guy busted out the back screen door and shouted at me "Hey! Waddaya doin'?"

Aw, shit.

It was really windy, so what I said back got lost in the breeze. I cautiously walked closer and repeated that I was just a curious photographer appreciating the look of this really cool, welded hunk of metal.

He liked that.

After I complimented the piece, I could see the gruffness and suspicion yield. I was no longer a potential intruder, or trespasser. I was a fellow artist. We were on common ground.

Me: I've been admiring this hood for a while and wanted to photograph it.

Him: Yeah?

Me: Yeah. I tried the other day but the shadows were too harsh. The lighting today is perfect. I hope you don't mind.

Him: No. No. That's fine. Take all the pictures you want. You wanna see the rest of it?

Me: Absolutely.

He pulled a tangle of keys from his pocket and unlocked the door to a garage full of carcasses in various stages of dis-assembly and completion. There were tools and parts and signs and dirty calendars with naked girls, the atmosphere suffused with that heady combination of rust and oil and dirt and sweat.

It was the kind of place those two guys on "American Pickers" would jizz themselves over.

The "rest of" the car that went with the hood out front was a low-slung vehicular sculpture-in-progress made from a melange of Chevrolet, Ford and Cadillac parts.

I say sculpture, because I've seen the guys' finished work out in the front yard. He's not just a mechanic or a hobbyist. This guy is an artist who happens to work with fins and fenders and hoods and chassis.

He talked to me about a few of the pieces he was working on, including a truck he'd recently convinced a reluctant seller to sell. He said he'd been trying to buy it since he was 12 years old, which had to be about 40 years' of persuading.

These weren't just cars, they were his soul. And I could see and hear in how he talked about them how much he loves what he does.

We were two strangers, but we were talking like old friends. Art will do that.

As he locked up, we shook hands I thanked him and introduced myself.

Me: I'm Erin, by the way.

Him: I'm Beaver.

And we weren't strangers anymore.

He was Beaver and I was me and we both knew a good thing when we saw one.

Still Playing With Barbies, At MY Age

"You can't stop the future

You can't rewind the past

The only way to learn the secret

... is to press play."

-- Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

Self portrait 7-15-14

"She was not one for emptying her face of expression."

-- J.D. Salinger, Franny and Zooey

"How old would you be if you didn't know how old you was?"

-- Satchel Paige

Yesterday I came face to face with my age.

Again.

It was my birthday.

Again.

So that happened.

My Motorcycle

"You do not need a therapist if you own a motorcycle."

-- Dan Akroyd

Self portrait 6-20-14

"A motorcycle is an independent thing."

-- Ryan Hurst

This is me with my motorcycle.

My motorcycle's name is Suzi.

Suzi is one of the goodest good things of all.

She is mine. All mine.

We had a super good ride yesterday.

But then again, a motorcycle ride is always good.

And a good motorcycle ride always seems to make everything better.

I call it pscycletherapy.

Zoom, zoom!

Pressing Pause

"Flowers didn't ask to be flowers and I didn't ask to be me."

-- Kurt Vonnegut

Coral rose 6-17-14

"I get those fleeting, beautiful moments of inner peace and stillness --

and then the other 23 hours and 45 minutes of the day,

I'm a human trying to make it through in this world."

-- Ellen DeGeneres

"But this rose is an extra. 

Its smell and its color are an embellishment of life, not a condition of it.

It is only goodness which gives extras, 

and so I say again that we have much to hope for from the flowers."

-- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes

If only life had a "pause" button.

When too much is happening and its all just a confusing commotion of meaningless noise, wouldn't it be nice to be able to press pause and  put it all on hold for just a little while?

The bang and clatter don't have to be coming from "out there," either.  I've found that my inner racket can be louder and more bewildering than any external noise. 

Yesterday the noise inside got a little overwhelming, so I poured myself a fizzy and went outside. 

I sat at the patio table for a while and listened to the birds making a general fuss about things. I checked the progress of my vegetable garden: blooms on the zucchini and tomatoes, lovely florets on the broccoli, cauliflower doing nicely, peppers a little behind, weeds to be pulled, time to water.

I wandered around the backyard flower beds. 

The coral rose bush was covered in tight little buds. But a couple of blooms were just beginning to uncoil. I grabbed my camera, just to see how they'd look through the viewfinder, and a beautiful thing happened.

The noise died down.

Life paused.

I spent I-don't-know-how-long looking at buds and blooms through the eye of my macro lens. My breathing slowed and evened out. My mind settled and quieted. The confusing cavalcade of anxious thoughts diffused into the blurry background as I focused close-up on a single something else.

I didn't look up until my camera battery died.

The birds were still making a fuss.

The weeds still needed to be pulled.

My inner racket was still rattling around in its cage.

But the volume was turned way down and the noise didn't bother me nearly as much.

Now, if only life had a "mute" button.

One Good Enough Thing

"Don't think that you are not good enough;

others will think that for you."

-- Vikrant Parsai

Red-winged blackbirds 5-16-14

Someone was telling me about these eleven bald eagles that circle the sky around sunset over a nature preserve near my house.

So last night, around sunset, I packed up my camera stuff and headed over there. I hadn't recorded a "good thing" for the day yet, and I figured a sky full of bald eagles at sunset would do the trick.

Guess what? No eagles.

I saw a bunny. I saw a deer. I saw some geese. And I saw lots and lots of red-winged blackbirds.

These blackbirds were particularly noisy and vocal -- as if they were squawking "Hey, look at us! Up here! We're birds too, you know. So what if we're not fancy schmancy bald eagles. They're overrated anyway. What, aren't we good enough for you? At least we had the decency to show up, for chrissakes. How's about snapping a picture of us guys?"

And so I did.

Sure, bald eagles are majestic and regal and impressive and all that shit. But so are red-winged blackbirds in their own way, with their bright red and gold epaulets, like they're wearing little military dress uniforms. It was almost dark, too dark to see much color or detail, but the twilight was just good enough to capture their silhouettes against the darkening sky.

Sometimes good enough is good enough.

And for today, that's a good enough thing.

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.  

 

Tapping My Inner Domestic Diva

"My second favorite household chore is ironing.

My first being hitting my head on the top bunk bed until I faint."

-- Erma Bombeck

Self portrait 5-1-14

"The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day

I accidentally got gin in the steam iron."

-- Phyllis Diller

As wife-ing and domestic duty-ing go, I've never really seen myself as much of a housekeeper, let alone a "domestic diva" or even "the little woman."

It's no secret.

I pretty much suck at housework.

But every once in a while I get a bee in my domestic bonnet. It happened yesterday when I finally tackled the mountain of my husband's un-ironed dress shirts.

"The Laundress," Edgar Degas, c. 1869

"The Laundress," Toulouse-Lautrec, c. 189

He wears a dress shirt and tie to work every day. He has 75 dress shirts. I know, I counted. With that many shirts, I can go quite a while without ironing them before he runs out. But there eventually comes a time when I have to roll up my sleeves and just do the job.

Some of my favorite paintings have always been Edgar Degas' and Henri Toulouse-Lautrec's studies of laundresses. I think I like them because these girls look like they feel about as bored and uninterested in the drudgery of their mundane chore as I do. They all look as if they'd rather be anyplace else but stuck behind the ironing bored --er --board.

"The Laundress," Edgar Degas, c.1873

I was inspired by these women for today's self portrait. So if you pressed me for the truth, I'd have to admit that ironing the shirts wasn't just about ironing the shirts.

I had art in mind and a new camera lens to try out. And the light coming in the window was pretty great.

So while it may look as though I was fulfilling one of my domestic duties, in actuality I was hard at work making an homage to some of my favorite painters.

I mean, the ironing still got done. I did it. I still get the wife points, right? I just had to have an ulterior motive to give me the push to finally get around to actually doing it.

Whatever it takes, boys and girls.

Whatever it takes.

.

Something To Keep Me From Totally Flipping My S#!T Because I'm Stuck Indoors

"To be human is to keep rattling the bars of the cage of existence,

hollering, 'What's it for?'"

-- Robert Fulghum

Self portrait 4-17-14

"Human beings want to be free 

and however long they may agree to stay locked up, to stay oppressed, 

there will come a time when they say 'That's it.'

Suddenly they find themselves doing something 

that they never would have thought they would be doing,

simply because of the human instinct that makes them turn their face towards freedom."

-- Aung San Suu Kyi

It snowed, again and dropped into the low 20s, again.

Remember those lovely daffodils I talked about a couple of days ago? They're fucked.

After the rain beat the shit out of them, the show completely crushed them into the ground.

I tasted freedom during an all-too-brief weekend breakout, but then Winter threw me back in lockup and slammed the cell door.

I'm trapped inside looking out, again.

Yesterday I could be have used my time in solitary confinement (or as I like to think of it, "the hole") to get a jump on Spring cleaning the house -- the windows need washing, the carpets need sweeping, the furniture needs dusting, the grout needs scrubbing.

Instead, in a desperate act of survival, I spent the afternoon fighting back the crazy by making this self portrait of how I'm feeling right about now. I had to get it out of my system before I totally flipped my shit and started smashing stuff. It's a good thing, cuz I was about to start eating my own offspring.

The grout can fucking wait. I have more important things to do.

New Camera

"Old friends pass away, new friends appear.

It is just like the days.

An old day passes, a new day arrives.

The important thing is to make it meaningful:

a meaningful friend -- or a meaningful day."

-- Dalai Lama

Lego camera 4-10-14

"Louie, I think this is the beginning of a beautiful friendship."

-- "Rick Blaine," Casablanca

For the past few weeks I have been borrowing Leo's camera because the shutter button on mine detached and fell out.

Rather than get mine fixed, the guys at Best Buy gave me a store credit to replace it.

I didn't really want to buy another camera that might have the exact same problem, so instead I used the store credit and kicked in a good chunk of my own money for a significant upgrade.

Old Camera was so familiar, so easy. We went together like peas and carrots. I didn't even have to look to know which of her buttons to press. She was like an extension of myself.

But New Camera?

New Camera feels strange and unfamiliar. I have to refer to her owner's manual to figure out simple functions. New Camera is complicated. Mysterious. A little scary. New Camera can do things I'm not sure I'll ever want or need her to do.

Every relationship has its initial getting-to-know-you awkward phase.

The only remedy is to spend time together. There's no magic. There's no way around it. It just takes lots of time and lots of practice.

So yesterday while the Indians double header was on TV, I set up a mini photo shoot in the family room and experimented with New Camera for a couple of hours, just so she could start showing me her stuff. I built a tiny little camera out of Legos and shot it a bunch of different ways with a bunch of different modes and settings.

We were just playing. Nothing formal. No pressure.

Little by little I started to feel more comfortable with New Camera's weight and balance and controls.

We'll do more today. A little more tomorrow. Even more the day after that.

I suppose it's kind of like saddling up a prize show horse when you've grown really comfortable riding a simple pony. You know what she's capable of, and she wants to show it you, but she can sense your unease and uncertainty.

She's skittish. You're skittish. And you're both making each other nervous and frustrated. She may throw you off a time or two.

It's OK.  Dust off and climb back on.

It may take us a while, but we'll get there.

April Showers

"For after all, the best thing one can do when it's raining is to let it rain."

-- Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Raindrops, splashes and bubbles (and a hidden self portrait!) in a rain puddle 4-5-14

"Rain is grace; rain is the sky condescending to the earth;

without rain, there would be no life."

-- John Updike

I went outside and played in the rain while I wait for the April showers to turn into May flowers.

A Change In Scenery

"The really happy person is the one who can enjoy the scenery,

even when they have to take a detour."

-- James Jeans

Red truck 3-30-14

"My mother said I should have a 'change of scenery.'

The word scenery made me think of a play.

And as we were driving around, it made sense that way.

Because no matter how much the scenery changed,

we were still on the same stage."

-- David Levithan, Every You, Every Me

White barn 3-30-14

"Sometimes a change in scenery is good,

sometimes time runs out in a certain spot.

It did for me here."

-- Phil Nevin

Tanker under red sky 3-30-14

We had to take a car trip to my hometown yesterday for a family thing.

It's a drive we've made hundreds of times. We take the Ohio Turnpike and interstate highways, and the view out the car window at this time of year is drab and gray and dismal and grim, with a guardrail slicing through everything. It is, as my 10-year-old nephew Marco would say, "Bo-ring!"

When we go anyplace with Leo in the car, I get relegated to the back seat because he needs the room up front for his giraffe legs. Plus, he wanted to drive.

I didn't feel like reading. I didn't feel like napping. I couldn't get into the music Leo was listening to.

So I started fiddling with some of the unused settings on my camera.

I had the most fun with the color swap feature. With a couple of clicks I could change the flat grays and boring beiges into vibrant reds, vivid golds and deep blues. The ho-hum view out my window became a kind of neutral canvas that I could color in however I wanted, turning the monochromatic unimaginative winter landscape into something far more ethereal and interesting.

Much better.

Sometimes you need a change of scenery.

But when the scenery is stubborn and won't change for you, go ahead and take matters into your own hands and change it yourself. It's a good way to pass the time -- at least until you get carsick from riding in the backseat and looking through a viewfinder with a teen boy at the wheel who is changing lanes, and radio stations, abruptly and often.

Then it's time to take a nap before you puke.

Being In A Really Weird Mood

"I'm in a weird-ass mood today, Doc. 

Wired up, mind all over the place, looking for answers, 

reasons, something solid to cling to, something real, 

but just when I think I've got it figured out and neatly filed under fixed instead of fucked, 

turns out I'm still shattered, scattered and battered."

-- Chevy Stevens, Still Missing

Self portrait 3-29-14

"I may be weird, but creative-wise I have the knowledge to know and believe in my heart 

that my weirdness makes me unique. 

It is also in my so-called  weird that I am also able to know the difference 

and then stop my complaining and go out and make something somebody has never seen before."

-- Henri Matisse

"When you're strange

Faces come out of the rain

When you're strange

No one remembers your name

When you're strange ..."

-- The Doors, "People Are Strange"

Yesterday I felt unfocused, unbalanced, jumpy, unpredictable, impulsive and volatile.

Nothing was wrong, necessarily. I was just in a really weird mood.

Being in a weird mood isn't necessarily a good thing in and of itself. But it can be if you tap into the weird and create something artistically strange out of it.

In my weird little world, strange art is better than no art.

So that's what I did.

In the morning I was exercising and saw a mental image of me with my hands over my face and my eyes peering right through my hands. Not, like, peeking between my fingers, but looking right through my hands. Hmmm, I thought, that's strange. But I went with it anyway and translated my weird mental image photographically into a strange little self portrait.

I can't say for sure if I think it's a good thing. But I am fairly certain it's a little bit strange.

Weird, huh?

Ding! Ding! Ding!

Which brings us to the One Good Thing "Get Your Weird On" creative challenge. Here's how it works:

Next time you're having one of those weird days like I just did, don't let the strangeness pass unnoticed into the rear view of your life.

Document that shit. Take its picture. Write it down.

Whatever your chosen craft, use it to make yourself a weird souvenir, a memento, a post-card of sorts to remember it by. Nobody else has to see it, unless you want them to. It's meant for you and you alone, so tap into your weird-ass dreamscape and let it flow. My only rule is that there are no rules -- the weirder the better.

If you're a writer, write a strange little poem or story, without the annoying, discouraging voices of critics and editors or your mother telling you "You can't do that, it's too weird." You know what? Fuck 'em.

If you're a painter -- well, you're probably already a frequent traveler to the island of weird, so you can really push the envelope of strangeness here. Paint on the kitchen floor with the expensive unused condiments crowded into your fridge door. Call it "Tapenade on Tile with Sriracha."

If your medium is cakes and pastries, experiment with some strange new ingredients and whip up some kind of savory Geoduck and Daikon tartlets. (If you aren't familiar with these ingredients, it's probably because they're pretty weird. They also both look strangely like gigantic penises, which is a fun bonus.)

Anyway, you get the picture. Just make it weird.

You can go back to "normal" later on. For now, enjoy playing with some of the other less-used  settings on your dial.

Just remember --

Weird is good.

Playing With Matches

"There's no such thing as a perfect relationship.

It's about finding someone who matches you 

and will go through everything without giving up."

-- Ziad K. Abdelnour

"She's Met Her Match"

(a tale of burning love, and loss)

by Erin Bunting

Matches in love 3-26-14

"... each of us is born with a box of matches inside us

but we can't strike them all by ourselves."

-- Laura Esquivel, Like Water for Chocolate

It never ceases to fascinate me the way inanimate objects can be arranged and photographed to communicate feelings and emotion and words.

I spent an entire afternoon striking matches, letting them burn down to my fingers, then forging little relationships between them.

It was a good thing to do while a March blizzard blustered outside.

Some might just see burnt matches in these photographs.

But I saw a tender, lovely, sad  little tale of love and heartbreak. I hope you can see it, too.

If you can't see, maybe you should light a match.

Doing Nothing

"Who can take a nothing day,
and suddenly make it all seem worthwhile?
Well it's you girl, and you should know it."

-- theme song, The Mary Tyler Moore Show

Doing nothing 3-13-14

"Anything can happen in life, especially nothing."

-- Michael Houellebecq

Snowbound. 

Stuck inside. 

Bored. 

Wandering the house not sure what to do with myself. 

Starting and abandoning projects. 

Dreaming of warmer days. 

I made this photograph to help pass the time. 

It worked, for a little bit anyway.

So, I guess doing nothing was a good thing.

Tick, tock.

Shapes And Colors

"I found I could say things with color and shapes

that I couldn't say any other way --

things I had no words for."

-- Georgia O'Keeffe

Bottles abstract 3-9-14

"There is no abstract art.

You must always start with something.

Afterward you can remove all traces of reality."

-- Pablo Picasso

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.