Smoky Mountain Mud

Fall has sprung...

2011-09-15T10:32:00.000-04:00

Time to stick your head out and look around... Where have I been, where am I going? Depends on the life I create by my thought and energy, by my work and play, by my joy, love, compassion and equanimity...

2011-09-07T08:59:00.000-04:00

Happy wabbit, happy pup...

Elvis has left the building...

2011-05-26T10:08:00.000-04:00

That's right...Elvis has gone to join his fellows in an incredible shrine to Elvis that is right in the heart of Farragut. Or maybe he really did leave on the Hale-Bopp comet!

Crazy wabbit...

2011-05-24T08:55:00.000-04:00

Hey! What you looking at? Mwahahahahahahaha!

2011-05-18T14:13:00.001-04:00

Hey wait! What did you say? We're gonna be fired? What's fired? Help! Help!

2011-05-14T08:00:00.002-04:00

Experience is a teacher, not the creator of our lives.

2011-05-11T08:53:00.002-04:00

Reminded this morning of the Cicada making its return to middle Tennessee, not the annual cicada, but the periodical cicada who waits 17 years to emerge, sing for love, lay eggs, then die. Eggs hatch and the larvae burrow into the ground to wait 17 more years for their glory. Makes one day at a time seem pretty easy!

The Sound of One Fork
BY MINNIE BRUCE PRATT

Through the window screen I can see an angle of grey roof
and the silence that spreads in the branches of the pecan tree
as the sun goes down. I am waiting for a lover. I am alone
in a solitude that vibrates like the cicada in hot midmorning,
that waits like the lobed sassafras leaf just before
its dark green turns into red, that waits
like the honeybee in the mouth of the purple lobelia.

While I wait, I can hear the random clink of one fork
against a plate. The woman next door is eating supper
alone. She is sixty, perhaps, and for many years
has eaten by herself the tomatoes, the corn
and okra that she grows in her backyard garden.
Her small metallic sound persists, as quiet almost
as the windless silence, persists like the steady
random click of a redbird cracking a few
more seeds before the sun gets too low.
She does not hurry, she does not linger.

Her younger neighbors think that she is lonely.
But I know what sufficiency she may possess.
I know what can be gathered from year to year,
gathered from what is near to hand, as I do
elderberries that bend in damp thickets by the road,
gathered and preserved, jars and jars shining
in rows of claret red, made at times with help,
a friend or a lover, but consumed long after,
long after they are gone and I sit
alone at the kitchen table.

And when I sit in the last heat of Sunday, afternoons
on the porch steps in the acid breath of the boxwoods,
I also know desolation. The week is over, the coming night
will not lift. I am exhausted from making each day.
My family, my children live in other states,
the women I love in other towns. I would rather be here
than with them in the old ways, but when all that’s left
of the sunset is the red reflection underneath the clouds,
when I get up and come in to fix supper,
in the darkened kitchen I am often lonely for them.

In the morning and the evening we are by ourselves,
the woman next door and I. Still, we persist.
I open the drawer to get out the silverware.
She goes to her garden to pull weeds and pick
the crookneck squash that turn yellow with late summer.
I walk down to the pond in the morning to watch
and wait for the blue heron who comes at first light
to feed on minnows that swim through her shadow in the water.
She stays until the day grows so bright
that she cannot endure it and leaves with her hunger unsatisfied.
She bows her wings and slowly lifts into flight,
grey and slate blue against a paler sky.
I know she will come back. I see the light create
a russet curve of land on the farther bank,
where the wild rice bends heavy and ripe
under the first blackbirds. I know
she will come back. I see the light curve
in the fall and rise of her wing.

Be yourself...

2011-02-02T10:18:00.002-05:00

What if we all stopped listening to the little voices in our heads telling us what we "should" do and lived our lives in truth, honesty, and integrity? Truth and honesty - to our true selves. What if we allowed our creative impulses to blossom and flourish in this environment of truth?

2010-11-19T09:49:00.002-05:00

One of my favorite philosophical tenets is that people will agree with you only if they already agree with you. You do not change peoples minds.

~ Frank Zappa

2010-11-15T11:36:00.005-05:00

Work in progress... reminds me to be grateful every day that I'm not in the shark's belly.

“In the time of your life, live - so that in that wondrous time you shall not add to the misery and sorrow of the world, but shall smile to the infinite variety and mystery of it.”

William Saroyan

Thanks to Jane Cartwright for these photos!

2010-11-11T09:42:00.000-05:00

Lines drawn in the sand - seems the wind just blows them away before we can get behind them.

2010-11-08T09:55:00.001-05:00

I'm begging for mercy Monday! Time changes are evil and must be destroyed... Even Snap still has on her jammies.

Today I'm thinking about surrender... Meaningful surrender to the phantoms we fight (like Monday mornings). Meaningful surrender to bigger phantoms like fear and conditions we can't control. Funny how I tend to think of surrender as throwing up my hands and quitting - it's really a choice, an action in itself. Meaningful surrender - step back, quiet my mind, stop struggling. Open myself to new possibilities within current conditions...

For small creatures such as we the vastness is bearable only through love.
~ Carl Sagan

Snap knows about surrender. She knows when she can't control the crazy humans - when she's going to wear ridiculous footie pajamas no matter how much she struggles. But still there is peace in her eyes - because deep inside she knows... I have to sleep sometimes. Mwahahahahahaha!

2010-11-05T10:50:00.000-04:00

Ok people... Who felt like this when you went outside this morning - cold, outraged to be up so early, not nearly enough coffee - you know the drill! Then while walking the dogs you stepped in, well, you know that drill too.

There's only one solution. The only thing that can make you feel better is some "classical music". A little Hoyt Axton to finish off the week!

See the rain comin' down and the roof won't hold 'er
Lost my job and I feel a little older
Car won't run and our love's grown colder
But maybe things'll get a little better, in the mornin'
Maybe things'll get a little better.

Oh! the clothes need washin' and the fire won't start
Kids all cryin' and you're breakin' my heart
Whole darn place is fallin' apart
Maybe things'll get a little better, in the mornin'
Maybe things'll get a little better.

Work your fingers to the bone - whadda ya get?
( Whoo-whoo ) Boney Fingers - Boney Fing-gers.

Yea! I've been broke as long as I remember
Get a little money and I gotta run and spend 'er
When I try to save it, pretty woman come and take it
Sayin' maybe things'll get a little better, in the mornin'
Maybe things'll get a little better.

Work your fingers to the bone - whadda ya get?
( Whoo-whoo ) Boney Fingers - Boney Fing-gers.

Yea! the grass won't grow and the sun's too hot
The whole darn world is goin' to pot
Might as well like it 'cause you're all that I've got
But, maybe things'll get a little better, in the mornin'
Maybe things'll get a little better.

Work your fingers to the bone - whadda ya get?
( Whoo-whoo ) Boney Fingers - Boney Fing-gers.

2010-11-04T10:46:00.009-04:00

Texture, shapes, "shades" of white...

This says "Surrender Dorothy" if anything ever did.

2010-11-03T11:12:00.001-04:00

One is for bad news, two is for mirth.

Three is a wedding, four for a birth.

Five is for riches, six is a thief,

Seven a journey, eight is for grief.

Nine is a secret, ten is for sorrow,

Eleven is love and twelve is joy on the morrow

(old English poem)

"One crow means sorrow, two crows mean joy,
three crows a wedding, four crows a boy,
five crows mean silver, six crows mean gold,
seven crows a secret that's never been told."
Nursery rhyme

Crows... One of the most intelligent birds, present in many mythologies and cultures. Keepers of the sacred law, teaching us to look beyond our cultural limitations. They are messengers who unite the light and the dark, the inner and the outer - teaching us to trust our intuition and personal integrity.

"Those who look outward dream, but those who look inward awaken." - Carl Jung

2010-11-02T10:02:00.000-04:00

Now here's a beautiful figurative painting...Biblis by William-Adolphe Bouguereau (1825-1905)- leave it to the French. Seems he's remembered mostly as a technician, but this particular work speaks to me anyway. I love the pose, the curves and motion.

This stirs something in me, makes me want to create something beautiful, makes me want to go into the woods and smell the fall leaves.

Monday, Monday...

2010-11-01T09:16:00.000-04:00

Ah, dragonflies... They have been on my mind lately. They symbolize change, the dropping away of illusions. They remind us that our thoughts dictate what we "see". They tell us to pay attention to our deeper thoughts and pay attention to where the wind is taking us. Look beneath the surface!

My grandfather called them Snake Doctors - a Southern folk tale that they followed snakes around and sewed them back up if they were injured. Ooooooey.

Monday - why you gotta come so soon? The wind has taken me to work and away from my "personal" endeavors... What's beneath the surface today?

Inspired by the marvelous Jane Cartwright to start my own blog...

2010-10-29T12:32:00.000-04:00

Now the last thing I need is one more thing I don't need. So what did I do? I set up this blog... Now I have another thing to not do while I worry that I might be doing it.

But, last week I found time to take a day off and go ride the Virginia Creeper Trail with my friend and mentor Marilynn. Here are some inspirations for colors and surface treatments dedicated to my fellow artists!

The lichens of course fascinated me - I'm a freak for little surprises in nature...

If you've never done this trail, (it's closed till spring) you should plan now to go! It's downhill all the way which makes it perfect exercise.

And here's Marilynn photographing. We rode about 20 ft before we had to stop for pictures.