Rachis

Dear Birders,

Here's one for your life list, to which you must now add all of the prehistoric birds formerly known as dinosaurs.  We are going to need a bigger field guide, my friends!

Charmed, I'm sure.

 

 

The Smiling Spider, 1891, Odilon Redon.

Dear Miss Muffet,

I lead an utterly charmed life-  I step out the door, only to have the birds sing out their message, just for me!  I turn up my stereo too loud, and the people sing along!  I bumble along at work, and a friend treats me to lunch!  I read my email, and there is this wonder of the world!

Spiders, kiss your homes goodbye, I am coming to take your webs for substrates.  This elaboration of our current symbiosis (you make the webs, I let the flies in the door) hampered by my occasional disturbance of your homes could be a beautiful thing.  Instead of just casually and heartlessly dusting and vacuuming your webs away, I could tenderly lift, layer, and mount them.

I imagine my spider web painting will be a very simple color study, with a several small, infinitesimal, even, spiders on it.  In soft blue and lilac, with a warm charcoal grey of complexity for the arachnids.  I hope the tiny weavers will be pleased by it.

pencils

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Dear All,

Are you getting my pencils?  I am leaving them for you all over the place- in hotel drawers, piling knot holes, in chinks between bricks.  In banquette seats, in bar loos, in sandwich shop pen jars.  In museums, on planes, on ships, in canoes.  In bowling alleys, in skate rinks, in cinemas.  Gas station johns, park picnic tables, school desks, ocean piers.  Seat back pockets on buses, pushed into the soil of potted plants, balanced on walls in car parks.  I hope you will use them in very good health!

Somewhere on the Road Between Taciturn and Misanthropic;

Dear Goodman and Goodwoman,

I am prepared to address the issue of adult coloring books.  I have struggled with their meaning, their message in the visually clotted and choked world of the now, but I have found something to say about them that is honest and long-considered:  If it keeps 'adults' off the streets, then I am all for it.  A  beautiful world could be built around adults quietly tending their daily coloring duties.  There would be no strife, surely, if all would focus on that tiny sliver of blue to be filled in at the antler's tip.  Yes, an adult coloring book in every adult pair of hands; this is our utopia.  Amen to that.

On the other hand, which may or may not be holding a felt tip pen, these kinds of books are perhaps too coddling?  Are they actually the self-driving car in disguise?  What soma is this mania, anyway?  I know, I know, one 'can't draw, not even a stick figure,' but, is one likely to get better at drawing filling in these little bubbles?  Didn't people used to say that free spirits would 'color outside of the lines?'  Maybe I imagined it.  Maybe just filling in the blanks is what we are here for: Age.  Sex.  Affiliation.  Nationality.  Descent.  Race.  Income.

Oh dear! I always stray beyond 'taciturnity' and end up right in 'misanthropy.'

The Ghost of Goody Two Shoes

 

 

 

 

 

  

 

Dear Diamonds & Rust,

I know what you are thinking:  What will I stop saying because I know it is only something I say, out of habit?  I am trying to remove the oblivious and unconscious references to things as 'good' or 'bad.'  It's exhausting and unrewarding, tedious and futile, but I am doing it anyway.  It could be a favorable pursuit.  I am worried that language is running the show, that words are the sticks and the stones, and that the physical objects are lying around inert, waiting to be named.  Rise up you inanimate objects!  Rise up!  Claim your rightful place in our world, our hearts, our consciousness!

Consider what it is to feel safe, to feel comfortable, to be content.  The very young like to have their things about them- the special books and furry bears, toys, dolls, blankets.  We are not so old as to eschew these comforts ourselves- we only make do with the idea that we will get through this dinner, this boring lecture, this journey of hardships, because when it is over, we can return to our slippers and chair, or our coffee cup and books.  Plus what, it might not be as bad as we expect, it might even be a good lecture.

So just what is delayed gratification?  An endless stream of promises?  Who can live on only the promise of tomorrow being better?  Isn't that just something we like to say to reassure one another?

Still, I can't bear to see you sad, so I say once again, I know tomorrow will be a better day, a good day. 










PS
Diamonds and Rust.










 

Harvest Time

The Internet: All Cats, All the Time. .

 

 

25 Cats Name[d] Sam and One Blue Pussy, Andy Warhol, circa 1954

Dear Purring,

Here is a delightful segment on why cats meow.   Here is a good song to follow the film.  And here are some cats on the Internet; because everybody knows that cat videos and images are why the Internet was invented in the first place.  Where would we be without it?  Petting more actual cats, probably.

One of the cats that lives here is formally known as Roosevelt, but her intimate circle know her as Toughie Muffin.  Toughie calls me by a pet name, too, I am her 'Molliewinkles;' as in; "Molliewinkles!  I have told you again and again to get that rattlesnake out of your mouth!"  She tells me this most nights, when I use an electric toothbrush that she thinks is quite dangerous.  She also admonishes me about the telephone answering machine, which is obviously a horrible box from hell capable of containing all manner of disembodied voices. 

Cats are very wise indeed, and I continue with things like the vacuum, and the guitar, and even this laptop computer, to what might end up being my great peril.








PS
I have read that Andy Warhol and his mother (both fond of living with cats) called all his cats Sam, except for one, called Hester.  I expect his cats might have called him by a special name too, maybe 'Old Squarepants'' or 'Scratchtop Pete.'