anti-model

 

Dear Outraged, Again,

I have had a few positive models for my behavior, but I have oodly scads of anti-models.  People I don't want to act, look, or sound like.  This is troubling enough, this fact, but it isn't what I want to tell you about.  What I want to tell you about is this way that we kind of search out, hunt for, things to be outraged over.  I think we do this.  Like we like to go on the scary ride at the amusement park, or watch the scary movie (uh, well, actually I don't like to do those things, but I think it is still valid) to feel a little thrill.  We look for things to be angry at or to hate because it feels like something, at least.  And no one knows how the microwave love works anyway, so hate is a lot easier to work with.  I know I do this, so I don't say this to suggest that you should change and I should not; I say it so that maybe we can consider our outrage more thoughtfully.  No, no, I don't mean eliminate it entirely, I mean, maybe we want to reach for it less often.  

I realize we will need some kind of medical patch, or substitute, like morphine, to help us to kick it.  I might try to substitute this kind of reaction:  Isn't that funny?  Isn't it peculiar that such an outrageous thing just happened?  Isn't it interesting, in an cultural anthropology way?  

Oh, and yet.  I suppose maybe it doesn't even matter to try to improve oneself in this self-absorbed kind of way; we all lead these double lives:  One life is Hi, how are you, I am fine; and the other life is I will be crying the minute I get home today, and tomorrow, too, and the day after that.

north & south

 

climbing rose shadow

 

summer goals

 

Dear Season of Now Shortening Days,

Here is what I have done for you:  a beach picnic, a movie, and lemon bars.  Yes, I do have more planned:  a night camping at the shore, and a trip to a roller rink.  I would feel better about six items, but, I would dearly love to earn my 2023 Summer Fun badge:  if I were to read a novel would we have a deal?

Anxiously awaiting your answer.

Ground Plane VII

 

Ground Plane VI

 

pink

 

winter days

 

Hall shadows.

 

sunlight

 

Late Fall Light.

Dear Near and Far,

It's like an Albert Bierstadt painting, isn't it?  I never say that we "are blessed," because that takes away our power to be pouty or joyous, pitiful or cranky, and gives it all to an impersonal (higher?) power.  What I say, is that beauty is everywhere, and it is free for the taking.  There are delights aplenty out there.

In Chinese painting of long ago, especially of the celebrated Song Dynasty, the artists specialized in landscapes with atmospheric perspective.  It looked like this image of the creek bed, and like this. 
Atmospheric, or aerial perspective refers to the misty, undefined areas in a painting serving as indicators of distance between objects in the near and far.  In other words, we read the mountains in the back as farther away from us because they are softer, blurred, less distinct.
 
Between now and then, abide in the misty interstices between near and far; there will be more on delight anon.

6.20.2017

Dear Summer,

Yesterday, driving home on the eve of your return, I thought I might have understood finally the magic of the visual effect of that hour, the after sunset time:  The light, I believe, has become equally reflected from the ground and from the sky, so the substance of the space in-between is illuminated.
It isn't very long, a matter of minutes, before the ground falls into deeper shadow, and that is another kind of time; l'heure bleue.

Until we bid farewell in September.