studio - behind the scenes
Editing: the next level
I have edited and corrected (and edited and corrected) the text for the memoir of my father and his ranch and now need to reweave the two narratives more tightly to make it “more enticing” for the reader. The only way I know how to start this process is visually…like rearranging the chairs in a salon so my guests (readers) can slip effortlessly into welcoming ease. Perversely, this looks like it will involve expending a great deal of effort, and then *pouf* letting it all go. David Foster Wallace died before he finished The Pale King, leaving his editors to figure out what order his voluminous writings should go in. No-one will do that for me, nor will they attribute less than coherent results to my (non-existent) reputation as a genius!
Reading the tea leaves…
…or the entrails. Or palms, tarot, dreams, horoscopes, ouija, bumps on the head, even statistics. We need to know and so we predict, though we mostly fail to take lessons from such predictions. And so we seek to prophesy again. This is my haruspex, oracle, prophet, sibyl, augur, seer. What will she read and what will her reading portend? Will I name her Cassandra? Stay tuned!
Winter Sun: Found Art
A Conversation with https://merkatart.substack.com/
Merkat: …I sit typing, milking the last drops of serotonin from my brain in order to stay afloat. Are you in the same boat? Let’s ward off scurvy together. A lime for your January thoughts.
Mia: I used to embrace my inner brown bear and crave winter hibernation. That bear is a cumbersome creature, no? But I have been working a long time now on what you offer in the second stanza of your poem, Dark Channels; climbing into that unsafe boat. Now, boatless, I am in the ocean trying to stay atop the waves of like and dislike, can do and can’t do. Sound Buddhist? It is.
I must add that the adamantine sun of winter still helps, as does giving that old bear a hug now and then (and yeah, the blog schedule gets gappy!) And while I might struggle to follow my own prescription, I believe more in-person contact is good medicine. Less Zoom, more coffee shop. Great Lakes people are winter people! Let’s get outside!
Art by Fan and Dusty, 2013
105 billion pounds…
…is how much plastic waste was generated in the US in 2021, according to a report in the Guardian. Where does it go? Not “away”, since on Finite Earth, there is no “away”. These particular bits of plastic waste were perversely diverted from the trash by my late aunt, who was loath to throw out anything that might be reused. Her pin-neat apartment concealed hundreds of ancient odds and ends. But bread bag clips? Hundreds of them? Equally perversely, when I came across them, I decided to keep them, mostly as a cautionary tale of eccentricity.
Years later, I have found a use for them…
… a new assemblage and new poem is in the works, equal parts statement, question, hope.
The Four Sisters
Haleakala Crater, Maui, 9740 Ft.
L-R Jackie, Vicky, Anne-Marie (Mia), Lyn
When we (on the left) were young, and visited the Rocky Mountains in the summer, The Three Sisters were always pointed out. Hey, that’s us! Then in 2004 we met Lyn, our oldest sister, a secret since childhood. Now we have another mountain, Haleakala, house of the sun, guardian of Lyn’s new home, to commemorate our sisterhood!
I too am commemorating, working on stories about my lifelong voyage, my rocky road, to this brilliant summit.
at the Colborne Art Gallery
My assemblage, Prairie 1 – Unsettled, is in good company at the CAG Juried Show until the end of October. The chosen works all inspire curiosity (how did they do that?) and creativity (how would I express this?) As the leaves drift down from the maple tree outside my window I marvel at how others have captured such exquisite moments in nature.
The Colborne Art Gallery itself is in the old county land registry, thus the bars on the windows. What was more valuable back then than title to land swindled away from First Nations! It is a land acknowledgment made manifest. That it is now an art gallery might go some way towards Reconciliaction. Let us be mindful when we cross that threshold.