The Painter's Wife

2010-07-31T22:03:00.000-07:00

two days of rain in the desert is enough of a shift in a elemental states to flip your synthysis overnight. Two days of rain, let it be nine, a revolution will happen if I give it time, if it gives me rain, I can discover my old self over again.

Who she was and who she is yet to be

2010-07-07T10:28:00.000-07:00

Distance from the old formula and associations are sufficient now. Dwelling in the space in between. Who she was, and who she is yet to be. Two poles on the horizon and the space in between the woman who is no longer the wife has a world at her fingertips to unfold in. Unravelled from the restless space of restriction. Tattered and frayed on the edges, the warp and the weft still bold and reaching from the heart. This magic carpet of life still has some enchanted journeys left.

Re evaluation

2010-01-03T05:49:00.000-08:00

I have been approached by a couple of friends who want to sell their paintings. Close friend, can no longer loose themselves in the landscapes. The power of a painting is to hold your imagination. A story in a capsule of oil & canvas. The painting should be an escape. A doorway into a field of a world remove from the unpainted reality. When looking at the painting one shouldn't consider the artist, just an appreciation for the pallet and conjouring. Not what he did before of after he picked up his paintbrush.
Now my friends have a hard time with the constant visual with a lingering lurking thought. I have tried to be discrete, a necessity in a small town, also too with collectors who so often become friends. When I have encountered anyone I masterfully cap the subject with a brief positive statement. There is no reason to repeat the cycle of dissolving. But the unfolding of our relationship altered a lot. Anyone who knew us over the years, would know of the shift. Those that knew the nitty gritty, the apparent madness of the painter could never look at a painting without the taint of discomfort in their bodies. The story of the painters life could never follow the paintings if the paintings were ever to be seen in their true beauty again. Indeed just as I wish that to happen, I hope too that the beauty & value of the painters wife can also be restored & seen by all.

Every step of the day.

2010-01-02T19:01:00.000-08:00

I should feel something quite considerable. But I am cautious & all felt out. At first all I was wanting to achieve was my divorce. I didn't imagine the year journey of dissolving our relationship would fracture off & splinter so much of what we thought was certain. The two of us should have escaped all this drama, all these casualties all this loss. This town & its people have been excused the staggering drama . Hero's in love, now all that remains of the epic alliance dismantled & linger like scaffolds of previous grand existences.

Its as if a storm has moved through my existence & left a hollow shell. I walk around the empty room inside. Taking in the contents. He has left for the last time. The papers have been signed. Whats left is the karmic clause & consequences. Thus we are spun out . Both of us unable in some sense. Both of us un cabled to our stream to the dream that we dreamed. Both un tethered from the structure of what we had cultured together. All ripped and torn away.

Washed up on separate shores on the day this day of the new year. I am grateful to get on my feet & see my shelter still standing. I have a place I can walk to. I can walk. He cannot, His broken hip unfixed for careless reasons leaves him limp and humbled every step of the day.

Fair weather friends

2010-01-01T16:21:00.000-08:00

I am surrounded by fair weather friends. The slightest storm in a teacup and they flee like fleas on a wetback. Fleaing from adversity as if there were'nt an empathetic bone in their flexible body. 12 years of cocktail raising stands for nothing.

The occasional thorn

2009-03-06T19:55:00.000-08:00

They didn't let it happen, Venus is in the dark side... retrograde and removed from reasoning. So I have to accept that the interplay in this stark clinical world of courts and 'objections your honor' have to pick this up and play with it to know the details.

I had been waiting for today, because I was to be divorced. But they didn't let it happen. A plea for a dismissal of the default yada yada fuck up... was somehow accepted. My lawyer was stunned. So it would have nothing to do with my prior tussles with the judge. I had expressed my concerns last week. When this lawyer became mayor of the little historic town at the bottom of the hill, he zoned it off and sold it up the ying yangs. Not content with the available land he brought in a rancher and they worked out a land trade deal with useless checkerboard land 100 miles from her, and carved out prime real estate in this lush little valley. So he & us tussled over his affiliations, and now the monstrosities.

That is one thing. But then 3 years later the barman that works for his wife assaulted and seriously beat up my very best friend. This shook me up considerably. I felt propelled to say something, and as fate would have it I turned up at the recycling lot in the village at the same time. I had seen her face only once in a news paper clip. But i knew who it was as soon as I saw her so I knew fate had place here there for me to give her a piece of my mind. From her point of view, my friend was a stalker, it was evident that her bar man was a premeditating freak. In a small valley of big families you don't want to prong the wrong horn. But that is my nature. A throne in the side of status quo.

I am but a simple happy milk maiden, until you cross my path, then I become the Princess Zena Cowgirl on the Western Frontier. All instinctive and purposeful I barely can harness the reigns. But blazing trails of opinions has its long terms scars.

First blossom on Apricot Tree

2009-03-06T19:52:00.000-08:00

Was up on the mountain early this morning, long before sunrise. Good long walk up hill helps get the mind quiet. All the time I was looking for a token of the day.

I am a champion on finding a treasure when I want one. A token from the earth that gestures an offering, a symbol. But today no scat or bones, the birds busy. I sat in a new meditation spot. One of the rare nooks on the hill that is other worldly.

My eye have been playing tricks on me recently. When I meditate the field of focus opens up. I am trying to see the space inbetween everything we see. Maybe I am getting short sighted. But when I am around trees and sky its like I see everything as I have never seen it before.

While sitting and contemplating, on the earth beside me I find a old piece of glass. A broken shard from an old thick bottle. Picking it up I consider it my token for the day. At first I think it too simple to be a symbol. Then I hold it up and look through it, I consider it my lense.

What is changing today is my lense, the way I have been looking at life. No more will I be restricted by the limited field of vision. Looking beyond the lense it opens up a whole world.

As I walk down the mountain the blue birds appear and comment on the day. Entering my little yard the first blossom on the Apricot Tree. Its beaming and bright prospects on the stark grey branches a reminder of the emergence from winter.

The night before the night before

2009-03-03T19:11:00.000-08:00

As average as this evening may seem, there is panic lurking beneath the surface. How can life continue so normally, is the world not aware that part of the world has ceased to exist. A major pluck on the heartstrings part of the world. Romance, requited love, just love. All now erased from my heart and the heart of existence. Fake and phony after all. An Impression of the reality of what it takes to step into the arena of commitment.

This I acknowledge knowing that I too stepped away. I too had closed the aorta that surrendered to love. So here is the opportunity. For a whole new story to unveil. But who could not be sad at the loss of a rear formula of love. Of a classical landscape once embellished with a sheltered nook and a picnic, now an asphalted pit stop. Lost of all the archetypal offerings of love, to be benign of expression. Like the culture of love had escaped completely. No catalyst left to offer a tickle to any fancy.

So into the desert of abandoned hearts I wonder. With a thirst so unreasonable I would suck on a rock for validation. But invisible validation is where it is at. If I am to make this transition. To trust the invisible, knowing that completion should be effortless, it should announce itself undeniably and willingly, and that is what I will wait for.

Being by my side

2009-03-01T19:26:00.000-08:00

Days left. Four exactly. Then the Judge will wield his hammer and change will be logged in legal documents. We will walk away in separate directions.

I have spent this last weekend looking at our little house. Cleaning and removing the bits of him that have remained unstirred in the last 6 months. A hollow emptiness with dust sculpting the hemispheres of the undisturbed. I have been waiting for him to blaze through here in his furious style. That will still happen, but at lease all his things are in one spot. Less obvious, boxed and organised, that was always what I did well, anticipate & prepare.

Somehow I wasn't prepared for him leaving, this time. But I was absent and had left a long time ago. I had summarised that I loved the painter and couldn't live with the man. It runs deeper that this. Deep as a gulch you could get lost and trapped in. Trapped for almost 13 years.. 13 unlucky for some. Not me.

My spirit was no longer free in his world. It had been denied and disregarded again and again. Conditioned from the first steps of our relationship, where our stride was once in beat. All of my freedom being frivolous and an 'Indulgence'. Interfering with his poetry and his ability to create.

My service is done. I bow and leave. I do not wish to cause pain, any pain, more pain. It is too late for questions. I don't care, I actually want to run for the hills with reckless momentum. For the isolation of a mountain is more comforting and accepting than being by his side.

Where from here

2009-01-05T08:19:00.000-08:00

Processing the end of this Impressionistic cycle I have firmly moved from denial into anger. Seething anger, and this is not an emotion I am familiar with. It is a rare expression for me. I have spent a lifetime molding my self around the circumference of anger. Being the field and buffer for any circumstances that may lead towards this constructive expression. Hence why I was perfectly conditioned to keep the painter happy and a world of disfunction sustained.

Now I am feeling the freedom of being released from such conditioning. He has left me, again, for the dozenth time, but for the last time. The first time he left me it was nine months after we married and had moved to the mountains in mid california. I had simply expressed my sadness that he did not get me a valentines gift or even a card. His outrage at my need for a gift of expression or love on a prescribed day infuriated him. I shouldn't have added that if he had expressed it on other days that my need would not be there.

Within moments he was transformed into a volatile marine, that place he had been conditioned to defend from. Foaming a force of anger I had never ever imagined was possible, spitting insults, packing up his truck with a streamlined speed . He took all his paintings, except the Angel, which was too large to fit in the back of his truck. Within no time he was gone. Gone gone gone.

I called his mother, and she said... to bad, he's gotta do what he's gotta do. Her response staggered me, especially today looking back. In the 12 years since all she has expressed is the sadness and distruction that the painters father caused her when he left her. Also, the reason the painter left me this time was the result of his mother visiting and spending 4 days for our sons 6th birthday. Talking hourly about his fathers traits, and the final clincher, that the real reason his father left her is because she didn't like sex. When did you stop liking sex, he asked. "the day we got married". He was curious if, thirty years later and after a lifetime of not having to work, workshops, painting, therapy and vacations, if she liked sex now. Nope. ....

I was unaware of this conversation. I was, dutifully manning the Gallery, as I did every day. I came home and discovered that the inlaws had left suddenly. The Painter was obviously seething. This field of friction I worked around, doing the motherly thing, and once our son was asleep I broached the subject.

I spent 2 months alone. In those 2 months I went through deconstruction and adaption. Daily I waited for the status to change, and daily I shed another skin of expectations. Two months soon became 3 then 5, and before I know it I have adapted to a life without him. Life on the other side. Stumbling and struggling with this new empty frontier, where I could frollock off in any direction.. but I don't feel much like frollocking. So for now I sit atop the plateau of now, and as yet am uncertain which direction to leap of to. So for now I have recoiled, to recoup and will soon feel the authentic substance of regeneration. Until then, this is the space between chapters or even books. Before me an empty page with volumes of opportunity.

2008-12-06T17:07:00.000-08:00

How do you break a pattern that is so ingrained that the threads of connection still hold their torque even when unravelled.
How too, do you overcome the formula of attraction to those patterns, and not spoon up to the next familiar warm spot.
I am ready to unravel.
I am so ready to move from this space to unspiral from the infliction of adaption over the last 12 years.
To accept anything less would be to deny the reality that has.... driven the point home, and then made its point again and again. Knot after knot. Knot after knot he has pulled the looseness of my string and taught me what is his hold on my reigns.

Conditioning by the alpha one. Conditioning to my desperate need to keep him. To be needed. To provide a platform that makes up for all my insufficiencies that he is oh so happy to point out.

There is no place where we meet where the land is flat. There is always a canyon between the way we understand. From my point of view and reality and truth of his conclusions. Different landscapes, different responsibilities. I a mother, he a painter. I a woman he genius with gifts that should not be denied. Our priorities are the creation of a world that is condusive to his every poetic need.

Mine are not new conclusions. These have been moments that touchdown every now and again. Actually more than now and again. So often over the last 12 years that it is now an island in my mind that I am so used to spending time in.

Four years ago, at another troubling hurdle in our relationship, when , once again, my problems and my issues were driving him crazy I was close to leaving it all and walking away. During an afternoon when we were arguing a young man from the valley stopped by the studio. I welcomed him in, but the painter was hostile and angry and said 'not now, go, this is not a good time' So he left.

A week later he returned. I was in the studio alone, and once again welcomed him. I apologised for the last encounter not being ideal and that I was glad that he came back, he paced, and obviously had something on his mind, so I tried to stay quiet. He then started talking. Talking and pacing, preaching as he had a natural gift of doing; not in an obnoxious way. In a way that made you stop and pay attention. How could you not when epic words are being offered by a respected source.

I knew this man was from a sound family. Religious, living their lives by the word. I knew his wife from years back, and my son mingled with their kids at school. So his audience was a token out of the blue and to be respected. But the intimacy of his dreams I respect even further. The fact that my husband the painter was the subject of his dreams and his words with god, where not even in the realm of expectations that I had.

This man had a sparkle and brilliance to his nature that radiated a charge of the sorts that lights up hearts around it. Up to that point my mind was set and I was leaving. But his words that day held my focus silent and translated to my mind a new way of thinking. That this man had a gift, but it was more than a gift, and that what God was saying to him was that this is a marked man, but more than that even. This man was Touched.

I wished now that i had broken my stunned silence to add that he was also a mean, angry ,selfish, unaffectionate husband.
I was truly incapacitated,I couldn't utter a word. As if god might thunderbolt if I even try and discuss or complain, because, didnt I hear the word, this man is touched.

I summerised the message from God, via the prophet, was to accept this 'Touched' man and make allowances, great allowances for the fact that this 'Marked' man was not fully capable of being in the world. Or even be conscious of those around him and the efforts they made to support his dream.

Four years later I am actually glad I didn't leave then. For I was in a different place then, and our son has many happy memories of us all together.

It is a different journey now, a new river of time to travel on. The canyon ahead is too narrow for me to really feel the freedom of the enclosed dark passage I am going through. But I appreciate the rapids in life are what shapes the marble of our substance.

The Hans Holbein Connection

2008-10-20T12:05:00.000-07:00

On our second year in the Wild West I took a trip without the painter, back to the Sequoia's where we used to live. It was an epic journey, extended by fleeing Los Angeles within 10 hours of getting there. Thus extending my time in the mountains by 4 days.

It was prime time for my architipal journey. The solitary mind was flowing script and having visions that were then fulfilled. The swiftest of which was manifesting a bear within an hour of having the day dream while sleeping in a meadow on some unknown hill that beaconed me off the road. Yep it was one of those adventures. A time of independence and fulfillment that was an alixier that I was yearning for.

During this trip, among other things I purchased on old postcard from the Louvre of Hans Holbein's portrait of d'Anne de Cleves. A rather osteir portrait of a woman, hands clenched, rings on most fingers, and an indifferent look on her face. I remember flicking through the cards, regarding it, and then later buying it along with some watercolors and a notebook.

When I reluctantly returned home from journey the painter had painted a painting. Unusually it was a self portrait of himself, in the style and costume of a Hans Holbein. The coincidence was flabbergasting. What are the chances that this landscape painter would paint a self portrait of him in this period, and infront of this portrait a checkboard with a painting of him and me from our wedding day on the board.

It was a significent piece. I was uncertain at this point of his love for me. I felt the time apart would help us clarify the truth, if we were meant to be together or not. This paintings show us together, on the checkerboard of life with this rather osteir victorian figure watching over us.

Even more interesting the postcard is a Holbein painting of Anne de Cleves, who was give Hever Castle as a gift by her husband, Henry the eighth when they annulled their marriage. This I find out a year after the painter, myself and our son visited the castle.

Henry the eighth sent his favorite portrait artist, Hans Holbein to the Germany duchy to paint a portrait of the intended bride and her sister. Particular about looks the portrait was the key to the negotiations of marriage that were started in ernest after the portraits of Anne and her sister were viewed by the fussy king.
The painter was apparently more enchanted with embroidery of her gown than with Anne's personality. Her eyes are downcast and her features lost beneath the ornate trappings of her dress and hood.

The English Channel delayed the meeting of the king and the portraits subject. For two weeks she waited in Calais until the ocean calmed to let the entourage cross. Their first encounter was brash and under cloaks and veils. The King pretended to be the Kings entourage. The marriage to Henry lasted 4 months and was never consecrated. Anne de Cleves escaped with her life and inherited the castle that the previous Anne (Anne Boleyn Henrys second wife, who was beheaded) was raised in.

The painter had been inspired to paint this particular piece by Holbeins portrait of an Unknown Young Man at his Office Desk. In the original painting the young man has a book in one hand and a scroll in the other. In the rendition the man holds a paintbrush and a pallet. The portrait is an amalgam of two portraits of other people from a decade earlier than the 1541 painting was painted.

There were many times in the past when I was prone to over look coincidences. But as the decades unfold I am more likely to pay attention to the patterns that have appeared in our world. Particularly the archytypal influences and connections that make themselves known. In this example there are the chances in a million that I would come home with a postcard from a area unrelated to the image, and find a husband who has painted a unrelated painting to his norm. That the two would tangent was remarkable. Than now third connection is the fact that we visited Hever Castle, the home of Anne Boleyn second wife of Henry the VIII and later home of Anne de Cleves, the subject of my postcard. On research of the connections the only other coincidence is that Anne Boyeln was excuited on May nineteenth, my birthday.

This is just the first step on my pondering this subject. I found the painting today in the basement. It is now here in my caravan as i consider that the man in the painting is no longer in charge of the board game, and the osteir mystery Holbein influence is in charge of the next move.

Everybody stops six feet from the edge.

2008-10-17T17:48:00.000-07:00

Everybody stops six feet from the edge. For a while I did too. Corralled by the expectations of those around me that were reinforcing my place and lasooing my wild ideas. But the edge was tempting. The idea of a complete alteration from the plateau of my current existance soon became the desired alternative.

The first time I saw the Grand Canyon while others gawked mezmerized at the whole panorama, I was the one on my belly head crained over the rocks. There was a deep deep canyon, so vast and barron, and there at the bottom a tiny green vein that runs the whole way through. Like observing from a cloud the world so far removed down below.

When I met the painter I started to explore the fringe. We left the world of the mundane, and drove as far away from the city.. That is the place I have dwelled and existed for several decades, and it is the place that I am now, suddenly unteathered by the restraints of a conditioned world. The blueprint has been ripped up. The foundation removed by an impulsive angry man. With devestating consequences.

Three generations of impact. Maybe four if we consider the painters grandfather. But that chapter will be explored later.
I would prefer to go back to the very beginning.

Think of me the happy, prone to fantasy, with a very active imagination, a place where anything is possible. Him, the Mocking Bird, adapting for convenience, finding a nest that suited his long term needs and moving in, singing my song.

The Currendero and the Curse

2008-09-25T22:07:00.000-07:00

From my astrologers point of view. Mars in my 12th house ( along with Sun, Jupiter, Mars, Mercury ) means all my expression and anger is internalized - hence my love of writing& passionate angry men... and thus The Painter was the expression of much of my internalized forces. .... if you get that kinda thing. I really do. Especially after 12 years of a little Biosphere of my own - of two cosmic forces.. obviously not quite coming together. OR taking 12 years and considering the option... or in his mind.. at this time .. which may not be his mind.. 12 years pretending.

Taking our combined charts, it was all forecast. Trouble brewing, powerful planets challenging the status quo. Things that could have stayed subtle and hidden become the catalists for deconstruction. Naturally I grasping on this as reasonable explaination for a change I didnt see comming.

Powerless to it all, I watch my beautiful sandcastle wash away. Twelve years of heart matched alliance ( yes I'am still in the denial phase) destroyed in a flash flood of pivotal seeds dropped into the palm of my husband heart by his mother. Not the first seeds of pain shared, it has been the glue that has held them together over the last 35 years since their family was deconstructed.

You may wonder if the charts suggest this too. Sure enough Neptune Moon in the eleventh house of Scorpio. Escape via death. With Pluto riding on the Painters tail right now, and Saturn on mine, lessons are being learnt whilst death and rebirth wipes the slate clean.

But I feel that is not the only curse. For our Currendero ( Shaman from the Mountains in southern Mexico) traveled here from Mexico with his wife, and yesterday they lay their hands on me and took the arrows from my back.

The timing of their arrival is perfect, he spoke of a dream he had, and that he knew that the Painter was never the same after he return from the Navajo Reservation.

The Painter was the token White Man invited along by the Goat Clan to there Family gathering. Invited by his best friend, the only other white man to walk in the sacred mountains with the 300 clan members. The Painter is not one to surrender his routeen and desires for anyone. He disregared the sharing of meals, where no one eats till everyone is there. He came and went without respect to elders. Until he was summoned to sit with the weavers so that they could ponder him. When he returned there were clouds around him and his friend. The Navajo wife was done with her husband, and we sat and considered the weight of that. 'How sad, a man to loose his wife and kids, what an empty life' the Painter pondered. Yet some how the medicine man soothed their storm, and the clouds moved on to gather over the Painter.

The Currendero had a dream, he saw the painter in his studio, but his studio was changed, and the Painter was sat in a hot tub surrounded by exotic women. Behind him there was a black cloud. The Currendero said he knew it that moment that dream that the Painter had a Navajo curse. His lesson is with the respect for the woman, and he does not like women. He is confused in his respect for them. You have been his mother, now you must let him leave and do not ever call his spirit back ever. He is on a dark journey.

I feel the curse is different. The curse is a family curse, built of many years of lies, lamenting and lack of boundries between a mother and her son. The son's image of his father shattered, his immature mind cannot overcome the fracture of adjustment, despite the reassurance by the mother that the son is absolved of any guilt and released from the family curse.

Hardly reassuring when your own journey feels like the darkest path, but I trust the wisdom of the Wise Man and walk the other way, my path finally on a different pole from the journey together with the painter.

To be or not to be

2008-09-23T22:02:00.000-07:00

To be or not to be, what can be fully understood, life is much more complicate.

To complicated, the example of oil on canvas can never portray. Oil on canvas is the offering of the static and beautiful the overlooked or unappreciated simplicity of composition and environment. I talk of course from the view of a painters wife. Someone who deals with the day to day issues of life, and the structure and support of a family and business. So life is more complexed for me. Caos is some fluid productive state. So to see the painter return from his day on the hillside all contemplative, without time for dishes or the chop wood carry water necessities of life I can be frustrated and his ungrounded reality. But then I touchdown on his world in the form of solid encapsulations of his meditation in oil. Far reaching from my point of hormonal surfing, but I welcome every glimpse, every smudge of paint. So blooming meaningful sometimes it takes me weeks or months to truly understand and see the painting for the first time. Many make me weep for the magic they hold. But the artist makes me weep more for his unattachment to life and family. His resentment of our interuptions and noise in his presence. How valid are we in the way we collide. Am I wrong because I don't conform to his way of existing. Is he wrong because he doesn't respond to my world of existence. Or are we not all just trying to be exactly who we are really meant to be.

Simpler things, ok hardly simply

The clearing from the Storm

2008-09-18T20:05:00.001-07:00

Here in the wild west we can see trouble approaching. We think because we can see for hundreds of miles that we have it all worked out. If you cant see the change coming those with barometric sensititives can feel it coming. Hang around long enough in a small town and all the skills of the tribe become apparent, and sensitivites are often the skill.

It takes a village, because a village has a spectrum of influence to offer. In every storm there are those that ride the rapids, and those that seek shelter.

I have always been one to provoke the thunder. I watch those clouds loom over our heads with no plans to quench our needs, and taunt them to surrender their burden. Innocent enough until you have been lashed by the strike of fate.

So now I wait for the storm clearers, the ones who see where the ruts and grooves funneled the challenge. Their assessment can take days or weeks, but soon enought the true impact will be understood.

y

2008-09-13T21:12:00.000-07:00

The first time he left me was our first Valentines day. I had been taking metal working classes and had made a couple of easels. I didnt have great expectations. But too great for the painter man. It was not the first time I had my doubts, that was a week after our marriage, when I would have walked out on any sain man. But I had never been married before. So obligations are different, and maybe, maybe he would change, this was not the real him.

The second time he left me was about 9 months later. We had opened our first gallery in Jerome. I cant remember what the trigger was. But madness took over as usual and swift response. The truck, old faithful, loaded to the gills and he took off.
I picked up where he left off and threw out all the excess. Not knowing that he would be back before morn. The third time. Well that I barely remember for that was over a decade ago. On reflection it all seems so irrelevent looking back. But then I do not have the troubled mind. Or maybe my troubled mind was just the tonic for his turbulent mind.

Nevertheless 12 years have brought me no closer to the man. Mearly more accomodating.

2008-08-21T20:07:00.000-07:00

The land is swamped with moonlight. A mysterious world revealed in silvery shadows, making the layers of the world more enchanting. When ever there is the need to see the world anew, sitting in the world in the darkness in the middle of the night, has become a nightime habbit.

The painter has helped me observe the composition of everything. The same objects rearranged offer a different formular. so too the aspects of light and shadow. Enough shadow offers contrast, too much and the subtle balance is lost.

So too in life, essentially light and dark are part of everything, the polarities of the stage of life.

In the Highlands where the clouds are thick gloomy towering grey layers, their merkyness is made relevant when the light battles through. Real bright light is an occassional thing, generally observed at a distance; many many miles, as the sheep runs, from the picnic. An architypal vision is the sun blazing throught the clouds, piercing the heavy pillars & plooms.

So too the light touches my heart. Not constant sunshine, not pitch black. But seen as relevant in the spectrum and balance.

Four O Clock in the morning has become a familiar surfacing time. As much as I am craving sleep, the solitude makes this time a special reflection

To meet or not to meat

2008-08-17T20:06:00.000-07:00

It was an innocent mistake. Truely. Although yes at some stage I did glance at the invitation, but details, what are details in an impressionistic world. Seen today, forgotten tomorrow. Such details will never, EVER, be overlooked again. Because today one of those landmark moments in mistakes of the meat kind.

The painter and I are really not one for parties. We would rather linger with a few friends and talk all night. We do go to out to our dear friends, but in a small town the intimacy and interaction can almost overwhelm. So either you are out all the time or you are selective and choose those rare opportunities to mingle and merge. Tonights motivation were more for the sake of introducing our friends to their neighbours. But Oh what a faux pas, and a disservice to our friends. So what have we learnt from this event. Never EVER take meat to a raw food house..... and may be more so, NEVER EVER take PORK to a Jewish Home.

To say we were marched out of the door is an understatement. But we and the meat left, truely highly embarissed by the hostesses horrified response to our mistake. I realise its my mistake, but being a people pleaser caught between my friends and the hostess, a rock and a hard pork loin... .there really was no creative way for me to think my way out other than leave in the meat parade.

My husband the painter, was as usual, oblivious to the happenings. Only when another friend leaned over to ask where the meat is going did he pick up on the clue and follow the procession of the meat shamed out the door.

I am horrified, bold as I am I cannot overlook the faux (canyon) paux.

I am learning at Pot lucks not to bring dogs. Having not had a dog for 12 years I learn the hard way to see them all arrive and frollock and squirt around my house. But dogs are like children, and now I have a child, so we learn about family, about community. Pot lucks in this community are unpredictable and uncontrolled. Some of the most cosmic coagulations have happened over the summoning of neighbours on this strange little mountainside. Mostly misfits and fringe dwellers, we somehow all fit here. But not tonight.

We brought the very wrong piece of a puzzle to a table.

One of my best friends is from Nepal. I explained that it was the equilivent of bringing the sacred cow to the table. ..... a very big no no... so we laughed, embarissed, and then I cry. Really cry.

A heathen in my organic roots. Simply summoned. But I can reason well. The gravity of this I can appreciate, but as I explained to my husband, the painter, 'I just put on my invisibility cloak and left'.

Lost in time

2008-08-16T20:31:00.000-07:00

Theres a great advantage to being 2 hours away from the nearest big city. The world is very different here. None of the needs and expectations of the metropolis. Cars tend to be older, fashions undefined. High heels, have been unworn and in the closet for almost 10 years, why I keep them I do not know. Around here with all these dirt roads and cobbled streets no one is insured or sensible to where heels. It is always an indicator of ' a newcommer', and often when the fashion conscious do come clip clopping through town they are regarded with curiosity and alienation.

For the painter it is all about light and shadow. He is barely aware of the hustle and bustle of the little things. Of more interest is the response of the desert. Here we are in the midst of monsoons, for us its all about the rain, and the break in the relentless heat. For the painter, now intimately with the cycles and subtleties of this arrid zone, he waits for the red dirt to be speckled with swift changes. No big fiesta, the response of the wild flowers is often overlooked. No towering blooms, but a simple subtle carpet, that breaks up the dominance of the red dirt earth.

On the home front, at the miners shack, windows are open, doors ajar, and the summer season of entertaining and being a good hostess, have been extreme. Dear little Maggie, our 7yr old summer lodger has left and is back to Vancover. But the bugs still linger, and I am sick, literally of being the focus of their needs. But they are all a factor of living on the edge. All part of the fractions of summer. Wildflowers bud and blooms, and so too the creepy crawlies.

Let it rain

2008-08-16T20:04:00.000-07:00

Monsoon season brings frisky unpredictable weather. Thank god, endless days of sunshine are such a bore. Never thought I would think about rain so much, tempting those clouds to just give us what they got. But 12 years in the desert have parched the Scottish lass, and when I think of what I would like to attract, it is rain.

Last night, full moon I sat in the jungle of trees at the back of the garden, and read the sky as clouds flurried past. Powerful moon, linger planets of Saturn and Mars. Nothing simple about that alliance. Bring it on, HA - she says unaware of their unavoidable purpose.

The painter has been sitting out the wind and rain in his studio. From there he can appraise the clouds and consider if he has enough time to get outside and set up his easel before the bothersome winds come. Painting in rain is not generally a problem with oils. But the monsoon rain can hit with such a force that the drops can nudge the paint. The only other time hes met such powerful rain is in the Hebrides, where a good brisk shower can be expected ever 20 minutes.

The end of summer

2008-08-16T11:58:00.000-07:00

I thought by now I would be advancing forward with all the pressing responsibilities of a grown up world. Our son just started first grade, and with that a new found freedom was to be mine. Was but not is, as the day he started school I broke my toe. For 6 years my little escort has been my constant companion, and my continued fantasy of alone time, freedom, idle fancy, have been just that, fantasy.

Meanwhile the painter has kept up his nomadic lifestyle, wondering off each day into the great outdoors, getting more reclusive as each year goes by. But the translation of his efforts now portray vivid magic. Astonishingly intimate collections of these canyons and corners around the valley that the restless mind would wiz by unnoticed.

Mixing with his pallet of red yellow and blue, he brings these landscapes alive on canvas. Heralding the simple association of trees and shrubs, mesa's and trails, life is observed anew from the gift of observation from the gentle man.

I miss out on the hike and following the painter around as he searches for his daily muse, but I do get to sit with his afternoons companions, as the paint dry.