onehouse

Dear God

Like Post Secret but no stamps required:

Dear God.

Weirdness

Monday morning is locking my head into some kind of weirdness and I need some kind of weirdness to get rid of it. Sometimes the great sprawling internet is just the ticket to not letting things get you down. Tiny magical mystery tours like this.

And I'm a little fascinated by the borgish Twistori.

Buildings

Immaculate Renovations: These are fun to look at.

What to do for May?

Well, that whole theme-based picture blogging thing seemed to knock me out of the blank page so I think I'll try something else this month.

Now I can't pretend to understand the whole picture but I have noticed something in the blogging world that bugs me. What is it, you ask? It's a type of blogging that's done by what could be a type of woman. The blogging that capitalizes things like Love, Joy and Grace - a kind of hipster version of 1950's femininity where everything is just a little bit precious, and personal revelations induce "weeping at the keyboard." (Seriously, there's a whole lot of weeping at keyboards going on.)

Coming from my background, dismissed and often maligned because of my gender, I understand the need for women to gather in spaces, conferences and collectives to help their voices be heard in what was once and still can be a white-male dominated blogging world. All good and well.

But there's writing being done by women that's funny, that wrestles with ideas, and that talks about things like nutrition or architecture or their lives without having every second breath taken away by some kind of personal or self-development revelation. That other writing just doesn't work for me. Frankly, in those environments I often feel like I've been thrown back into the neighborhood or church ladies meeting. Oh sure, martinis are being drunk rather than tea and there's a little more profanity, but the tone drives me out of the room.

So for the next month, I'd like to see if I can be mindful of how other women choose to meet and greet the world in ways that don't try to get me to "weep at my keyboard" or use Capital Letters. And I'll probably do it while drinking a nice cup of tea. Or maybe a martini. Or nine.

Picture Bogging: Day 29 & 30: Atlanta

My sister had to run into a lighting store and as we headed back to the car I noticed a small store that hosted the works of a grassroots arts collective raising money for literacy work and after school projets. I was immediately fascinated by the folk art pieces - tables, benches, bird houses made out of scrap wood and painted brightly in all colors. I am not normally a fan of "word art" where some one paints around a pithy motivational phase commanding me to have joy or hope or whatever. But in this context, the message hand painted on an object made of found objects, it all seemed to work for me.

Most of this work was done by an artist name Ralph Slaughter. Since my sister was moving to Canada, I purchased one of his tables.

The text says "Don't burn your bridges...you never know when you have to cross back over quickly.

Picture Blogging: Day 28: Storytime

This print now hangs over the fireplace in my office. It's by Katy Horan and called Storytime. My friend keeps threatening to steal it so I'm thinking of adding a big bike lock.

A Short Story.

The Preacher and the Heretic

Spirituality, it seemed to me, was as fleeting as fashion. Fear, rather than love, was the enticement to start looking for supernatural help. I had more faith in aliens and The Force than I did in the cross, but peer pressure is an amazing thing.

Picture Blogging: Day 27: The Arrival

The Arrival: Another beautiful Shaun Tan book that wordlessly draws the reader into an immigrant's experience of a strange new world. I spent a lot of time staring at these intricate landscapes. Book as art object and one to own.

Picture Blogging: Day 26: Comics Yay!

Just for fun check out Zip and Li'l Bit, an online comic. Start with The Upside Down Me.

Lines and Colors says:

In describing these gentle, well crafted adventures, the word “charming” springs to mind, both in terms of being charmed by the characters, setting and unhurried pace of the stories, but also in terms of being charmed by Loffler’s drawings, which are deceptively simple, but reward closer inspection.

Closer inspection is conveniently provided using one of the site’s great “only on the web” features. Clicking on any of the panels produces a pop-up enlargement of the panel in which you can see it in detail. This works particularly well in Loffler’s chosen format of uniform panel shape.

You can click through the enlarged panels with a hidden arrow at the upper right of the panel, until the end of the page. Notice, in the enlarged drawings, the loose but restrained linework in the backgrounds, accented with a bit of texture and a carefully controlled color palette.

Notice particularly, though, Loffler’s nicely varied and beautifully controlled ink lines on the figures and foreground objects.

Zip and Li’l Bit was originally planned as a print project, and I hope it makes it’s way to print at some point. The strip would charm children at bedtime just as much as adults at their computers.

Picture Blogging: Day 25: Indian Church

Emily Carr
Indian Church, 1929
oil on canvas

Switching gears from photos to paintings and illustrations.

It's funny what people see in this painting. Some find comfort in the familiar geometric shape of the little white church holding off the wildness of the forest. I wonder if this is how many of Carr's contemporaries, little Victorians busy carving out their comfortable piece of civilization surrounded by water and the unknowns of the green world about them, ready to drive the natural world into submission as they felt their Christian God had commanded them to in the opening parts of the book of Genesis.

But I have heard that Carr's intent was to show the intrusion of this building into the wilderness. More here.

This is what I see now when I drive through cities with churches hosting empty and large parking lots barren of any kind of vegetation. "How smart we are to be in Here and not Out There. How civilized we are to be inside this Building. How lucky we are to have found the Truth." And all the while a green world grows on outside of all the other large parking lots playing host to other large buildings.

I have a small print of this painting leaning up against the wall on my shelf of contemplative books downstairs. I'll be getting rid of a quite a few of these books soon as they keep my mind inside the little white box sipping tea with the so-called smarty pants. I want to get out into the trees.

Picture Blogging: Day 24: Puzzling

My brother took us on tour of a house that he is building for his new job. This is me looking up towards our current cold gray sky. It reminds me of the translation of the word "rule" which means "trellis".

Picture Blogging: Day 23: Prairie Winter

Just outside of Three Hills, Alberta today. I love how the prairie looks nearly monochromatic under a winter sky. A lot of landscape photos have barns or animals in them. I am fond of trying to capture the bountiful emptiness that Norris talks about. (Trying to find a way to post this in a larger format. Maybe later.)

From Dakota by Kathleen Norris:

Or, Gambling, Garbage, and the New Ghost Dance

The Plains are not forgiving. Anything that is shallow – the easy optimism of a homesteader; the false hope that denies geography, climate, history; the tree whose roots don’t reach ground water – will dry up and blow away.

Picture Blogging: Day 22: Three sets of Hands

My new niece Ava came to visit this week. Three sets of hands - Grandma at 73, Mom at 41, Ava at 4 months.

Picture Blogging: Day 21: City Pity

The whole city is a bit grumpy today. We're locked into snow and wind chills and icy roads until the end of the week and it feels like a time warp. This is my garden halfway through May last year. Mumble. Grr. Grumpy vibes. Mumble.

Picture Blogging: Day 20: Windup

Someone sent me this pretty little windup this week to go on the shelf along with the windup birds, lobsters, skeletons, robots, and chattering teeth. On occasion, there are races across the office with low stakes betting. I think this one could be a strong contender.

You can't go wrong with sparky wind up things. Video here to prove my point.

Picture Blogging: Day 19: Moon rise

I spend a lot of time staring out my bedroom window watching the light change. My chronic pain condition means that there are weeks of my life when I need daily breaks. It also means I will have long stretches of insomnia. One night I sat with a camera balanced on the window ledge taking pictures through the screen as the moon slowly rose behind the neighbor's trees. I like how the images came out  lined and blurry like a fuzzy TV broadcast.  That is how my mind feels, worn and mottled, as it deals with trying to relax against the physical pain. For many years, I battled these pain spells frustrated that I was lying there without accomplishing anything. But now, as much as I can, I try to relax into the moment and imagine the pain lifting from my body like steam. I send it out over the rooftops and, on a night like this one, into the air with the rising moon.

Picture Blogging: Day 18: Devils and Dust

I've been working on clearing out some of my books. I keep a LOT of books around. Organizing articles  tell you to get rid of the ones that you aren't reading and I laugh. Anyone that loves books will tell you that the point is to have them on hand so you can read or re-read them whenever you want.

But I am getting ready for a possible move in the nearish future - anybody want surly little me in their backyard?  - so  I've been selling some books and throwing out others. Someone else heard I was doing this and dropped by a box  from their parents' basement - mostly retro children's readers and some fiction. But then there was this little paperback warning the world about the effects Satan's music on the youth of today. When the book fell open to this page, I was surprised that the copyright read 1980. Wow.

Some of the books I am getting rid of have nothing to do with life as I now know it. They contain thinking  that contributed to a life that I have had to recover from (even though they contain none of the utter foolishness demonstrated in the above picture). Those books I throw away. I can't even think of reselling or recycling them as I don't want to have to waste anyone else's life and brain power. I have even used a few to start my summer fires. It's not an old fashioned book burnin'. It's just I'd rather see their useless energy transformed into warming friends on a starry night.

So take it away Bruce while I file this one under F for fire and futile.

Picture Blogging: Day 17: Silly Change

I started my first bank account when I was about 8 years old with 500 pennies - carefully counted and wrapped. My mom would help me pull the "really old" ones out just for fun. I think I still have some of those old pennies sitting in a jar somewhere in my boxes. I found this post at my other blog. I'm cleaning that one up and will transfer some of the stuff here.

Don't you think a country that makes a coin like this would probably be the place that was bothered by whether their leader bowls or drinks orange juice or has a silly pastor? But in this strange world, somehow it's the country with eagles and presidents that's has the goofy media all knotted up over trivialities.

Working for a non-profit means you are always counting your pocket change. In Canada, a significant amount of money can be tearing a hole in your pocket with loonies (one dollar coins) and the inventive follow up, toonies (two dollar coin). In 2004, the Canadian mint produced a quarter with a design by 11 year old, Nick Wooster. I never saw too many of these but if I did I'd happily mix them around with the loonies and toonies. It's important not to take yourself too seriously.

Scarcely have they been planted, Scarcely have they been sown, Scarcely has their stock taken root in the earth, But He merely blows on them, and they wither, And the storm carries them away like stubble.

Picture Blogging: Day 16: Bullshit meter.

Today's picture via grrrlmeetsworld.

More evidence of why, with each passing day, I move farther and farther away from institutional religion of many kinds and their associated yapping heads.

Picture Blogging: Day 15: Roseanne Cash

I looked around the net for an interesting picture of Ms. Cash or Mrs. L as she calls herself in her excellent column hosted on her official website. I found mostly promotional pictures which are all well and good but don't capture glimpses of her as well as her intelligent and honest writing in song and in prose. So this picture blog of Roseanne Cash is made out of pieces of the alphabet.

Poke around her column for reflections, excellent book and music recommendations, and art experiences. Or check out her latest songwriting column in the New York Times.

On vacation recently, there were some Christian fundamentalists at lunch at the next table and I felt the tension and constriction of their religious beliefs wafting off them like a perfume. That is my own projection, I’m sure, but I thought of something a friend used to say about that particular brand of religion — that it was like “looking at the ground with a flashlight when the whole universe was around you waiting to be noticed.” Walking to the beach later, I was thinking about how my own idea of God was so mutable, and that even though I pray, most of the time I haven’t a clue to whom I’m praying.

And I like it that way. Sometimes God is Art, Music and Children and that is more than good enough. Ruminating on these things, I thought of a phrase — “the pantheon of my religious desires” — and I wrote it in my notebook. That line is probably too sophomore-English-major precious, but this is how songs begin for me. Sometimes.

(As you read it, click on the song link to Dance With the Tiger which she refers to in the column.)

In every woman and man lies the seed of the fear
Of just how alone are all who live here
Denying the fear is the name of the game
To stare at the fear is going insane
Forgiving the fear is one up on Cane
Is to dance with the tiger
And laugh at the rain