A Day in the Life

 I'll be honest: I'm coming down off the I have the whole house to myself! cloud and tiptoeing along the ditch of Is that all there is? I knew the shine would wear off it pretty quickly.


Make no mistake: there's plenty to keep me busy here, with a book deadline looming and me working at capacity. It feels really good to have my watercolor painting chops honed and oiled. But when you've been used to other living souls around to feed, clothe and care for, to share with and laugh with, it can feel weird to go all day without talking to anyone in person. So you keep yourself busy.

I decided I'd better get my sneakers back on the road. I ran down to check on the neighbors' place.
 On the way, there was the most beautiful mackerel sky. I wish I knew how the clouds form and line up like that. I'm just glad they do. I feel like a bug under a lace doily. It's all so huge and beautiful and incomprehensible.

 
I turned off the road and down a dirt path. I stopped and rested in the shade of a bulldozer. The smell of oil and diesel is comforting, because it reminds me of my dad. He was always messing around with things that used oil and diesel. I figure if he's going to accompany me, it'd pay me to hang around machinery that he's interested in inspecting. DOD was all about machinery.

 

I walked to the rise, where I could see the neighbors' castle taking its final form. I've been walking in and watching it, with their blessing, for about three years.  Phoebe and I even walked around inside it not long ago, and it's really, really cool. It's so amazing to see it turn from big skids and piles of block into a real castle. And it's interesting to live near people who have a dream, however unusual, and are willing to put all that money and work into it.

 

It occurred to me that there aren't all that many people in this part of Appalachia who could or would follow a dream like that.  So that's something special, to watch their dream take shape. I like people with dreams.

Also special to me: The morning glories are finally opening. I didn't have to wait quite as long this year as two years ago, when they were still in tight, tiny bud on October 12! Still, it feels like forever. I planted the durn things in the greenhouse in April! Fenced and barricaded them against rabbits and chipmunks. Only two of the six made it even so. The chipmunks climbed up and into the 2' cylinders of chicken wire to bite them off. The rabbits nipped off any stems that dared grow outside the cylinders. It's been a thing.

But being able to drown in that heavenly blue makes the battle worthwhile. Last year I grew "Flying Saucers," these ridiculous tie-dyed white and blue things that on the seed packet sound great. This was as good as it got. And it's pretty good, but they weren't all that nice by any means.

 

 The vast majority of their blossoms were this sickly bluish-white, and though they were nice against a pearly sky, I hopped off the Flying Saucer train.

 

 Nothing beats this plant. I'll be faithful from here on out, Clark's Heavenly Blue.

Let's face it. I'm a color junkie. Always have been, always will be. It's just getting moreso. Here are my impatiens stairs. You can't really walk up them any more. I don't care. I like the cascade of color flowing like spilled paint down the old sandstone blocks. From the time we were first laying the stones, I knew they would be no more than a backdrop for flowers. I used to grow sun-loving succulents like portulaca, purslane and ice plant here, but the Japanese maple that stands guard nearby had other ideas. Slowly its canopy overspread the steps, and I was emboldened to try shade-loving annual impatiens. It turned out to be just the thing. And the rabbits didn't touch them, go figure! I'll do it again! And they've seeded themselves nicely. Doubt the seeds will make it through the winter, so I'll start fresh in spring.

 

 As I work away in the studio, painting top-secret blue jays and wishing I could share them with you, my phone chirps and bloops, telling me when a message from the kids is coming through. I am still in a state of suspended disbelief that I can SEE them. Get photos from them. Sometimes talk to them, and SEE them talking. It's a Jetson's world. I'll never get blase about that. I think of my weekly telephone call to my parents when I was in college and just shake my head.

It's one thing to see Liam in his dorm room three hours away in Morgantown, but quite another to see Phoebe, sweatin' to the oldies on La Gomera in the Canary Islands! How can this be?

She's on a Fulbright fellowship, and she'll be a teaching assistant in an elementary school, where her Spanish is going to reach full fluency. I can hardly believe it, and I can't wait to see pictures of her school, her co-workers and students.

La pinche calima is a Saharan dust storm! Ack!

Meanwhile, Liam shares his wry observations from WVU, where he's taking four art courses at once. He's drawing from life! I just keep shaking my head. They were both here all summer, and now they're off and doing amazing things, and I get to watch.

Both my fledglings have a good command of the language. Liam in particular has a really interesting vocabulary, and an always unexpected choice of words. I love to read their writing. 

As part of the Fulbright fellowship, awardees are encouraged to keep a blog. As a result, Phoebe is blogging, and I can't imagine anything that could delight this old Blogosaurus Rex any more than to see my girl spread her writing and photography wings for all to take in. Maybe it's seeing Liam's art on Instagram ( @lht_artwork). That delights me, too.

Phoebe's already got several posts up at canarycurrent.blogspot.com 

 and preliminary results indicate that the child can tell a story. I knew that already, but it ought to be a pleasant surprise to those of you who have been reading this blog for years. Check her out. I'd recommend reading from the first post!

I find it all pretty incredible. And it's happened so fast. One minute I'm asking them what they'd like for breakfast, and the next he's in a dorm three hours away and she's halfway around the world. And I'm reading her blog. 

Today I got buried in my work, preparing for a talk tomorrow. I ripped my talk apart and hammered it back together again with a bunch of new parts. I loaded the car with all my merchandise. And only when that was all done did I turn back to composing painting number 11 of 19 for Saving Jemima. 

And when I couldn't work any longer I got up to look out the south window of the studio. I could see just a bit of the sky, and I could see there was something serious going on out there.

Maximilian sunflower in the prairie patch

Better, I think, with goldenrod. It lets the clouds be their magnificent selves.

While I'd been working and thinking and absorbed, this incredible cloud parade had been filing silently past, unannounced and unbidden.

I walked out to the meadow and literally fell to my knees, looking for the right angle from which to record it. They were so huge and beautiful and growing, growing, growing, ever upward, their cauliflowery heads expanding, reaching higher and higher into the stratosphere.

It all reminded me of what has happened with my kids. While I was busy, they blew up into these magnificent proto-adults. And then they marched off to the south, like these clouds are doing. I can't stop them; I wouldn't even try. I just have to watch them go. 

Make a Joyful Noise

As you know, this tends not to be a timely blog. You're in the clutches of a blog ant, who stores up posts like wheat, writing when moved to write, and taking food out of the pantry when not. So it feels like an event for me when I've got any news, and actually get it together to do a post about it the next day.

The Swinging Orangutangs have done a bit of a phoenix trick, with a new lineup and a bunch of new material. Bill and I sat down at breakfast this morning and made a list of all the people we've played with in this band in the past 14 years. We've had five different drummers, six bass players, and four instrumentalist/vocalists in addition to the core members (Bill and me).

Bands are like gardens. Some years, certain things grow really well, and other years, other kinds of plants take over. Some incarnations of the Orangutangs have emphasized original music, such as was written and performed by Bill's talented brother Andy. Others have been dance/cover tune oriented. Some have been folkier. Others have been a little more kick-butt rawk.

Back in October '07 we needed to put some people together to play a benefit for the Colony Theater's renovation. Bill went to movies in the beautiful Colony Theater when he was a kid, but since then it's closed and fallen into peely, spooky, Phantom-of the-Opera style disrepair. So we've played music for ColonyFest for several years running to help raise money to resurrect it. We asked Clay Paschal, who's recently moved here from Indiana, to play bass...a growing buzz was out on him already in the local music community.
I can use only one word that accurately sums up his bass and rhythm talents: MONSTER. A tasty, melodic, unfailingly in-the-pocket monster. Last night at practice, I was playing "Empty Pockets," a fairly obscure fiddle tune, on my pennywhistle, and Clay began to whistle it, and then revealed that he plays whistle, fife, and has taught low brass (trombone and the like) in schools. Oh. One of THOSE people, those Stevie Wonder kind of people who can walk into a music store and pull anything off the wall and play it. Oh, and he's got a warped sense of humor, too.

Speaking of those people, here's Vinnie Mele, who has come out from behind the keyboard to play a guitar lead. He also plays sax and sings beautifully, like a crazy bird. Hilariously funny and ridiculously talented, Vincenzo brings a sparkle and dimension to our band that's addictive. And behind him is another natural wonder, Jessica Baldwin. Jess is a classically-trained voice teacher and pianist who teaches voice and directs choirs in a large local church. She has always wanted to branch out into pop and rock, but has never had an opportunity until now. Speaking of unleashing a monster...we're getting some four-part harmonies with Bill, me, Vinnie and Jess that literally bring me to tears. Jess has a lot to teach me about singing, and she's debuting Chaka Khan's "Tell Me Something Good..." singing while playing its quirky, offbeat keyboard part. She brought The Weepies' "Gotta Have You" to our repertoire, and we're tremendously excited about the dimension and vocal beauty she adds. Warped sense of humor, check. It's kind of hard to see here, but she's got her hair wadded into two Mickey Mouse ears for last night's on-site rehearsal. Chet Baker LOVES Jess, and he spends most of our rehearsal time here at home sitting on her lap as she plays keyboard, his ears pasted back in doggie joy, gently farting into our airspace. He has become our band mascot, a role he embraces with zest. There is NOTHING Chet Baker loves more than band rehearsals. He hangs with us like the white on rice, going between my and Jess' laps, roo-rooing at Clay and Andy, playing tag with Vinnie, and pestering Bill, but mostly just digging the music. He is one music-loving doggeh.
Andy Hall is an incredibly tasty, artful, creative drummer, and it's a privilege to play with him. I have to use the M-word on Andy, too. Monster. He brings a world beat savvy to our music. Complexity is his friend, but not his overlord. He spans genres like most of us walk across sidewalk cracks. My favorite memory of Andy was about a decade ago, when we went to a bar in West Virginia to hear him play with a band called Pole. As blood began to seep from our ears, we grabbed napkins, tore them up and made little ear-tampons, which barely helped. At the break, Andy came out to greet us. We complimented him on his work, which was stunning. And ventured an opinion that it might be just a teeny bit loud. Andy looked thoughtful, smiled, rocked back on his heels, and nodded. "Pole's a loud band."I'm happy to say that the Swinging Orangutangs is not a loud band. For my fifth and final monster, I present band leader Guillermo "Guitarzan" Thompson. He's in a special kind of heaven right now, playing songs he's always wanted to play with a dream lineup. With Vinnie helping on rhythm and leads, Bill's freed to sing more and soar on his Strat, Creamy Delight. Ryan Adams, Wilco, Tom Petty, Talking Heads, and a bunch of crazy 70's disco stuff; we've fattened the repertoire by about 15 songs, and more keep flowing. There is a sense of energy and possibility about it all that is heady and intoxicating. Bill burns CD's for everyone, calls practice in our basement music room, makes chili, keeps the cold beers coming, and the band rolls along like a well-oiled monster truck. We have a New Year's Eve gig tonight, with tons of our friends coming. A team of friends has transformed a downtown building into Party Central. We've got three digital projectors and some kind of fourth gizmo throwing swirly psychedelic shapes on the walls, every Indian tapestry we own hanging up, strange fiber-optic lighting gadgets, food and bev's. Me, I'm a pig in mud. I looooove harmony singing, and I love having another woman to balance the testosterone swirling through our lineup. I haven't laughed this much in a year. Tonight, I'm taking a mirror with me, because I have to stand directly in front of Jess, Andy and Clay. You can't be turning your back on an audience, so I'm going to hold up the mirror and grin and make faces at them. We're going to rawk....so hard. Every photo in this post was taken by our band photographer, Phoebe Linnea Thompson. She was fighting some bad odds--poor lighting and the tendency of musicians to block each other thanks to being crammed together with a bunch of homely equipment. Thank you, Phoebs.

Phoebe has been taking photographs and writing for a couple of years now, with increasing success. She usually works with a small Canon Powershot point-and-shoot, but she prefers my Rebel XTi (naturally). More and more, I lean on her for off-the-cuff photography assignments. It's wonderful to watch her blossom. Speaking of blossoming...Phoebe has a blog now! She's got mad blogging skilz, born of posting for me and Daddy when we're indisposed, and spending lots of time getting Macs to do what they were made to do, without her mother's fear of failure. I can guarantee lots of Chetfixes on Phoebe's blog, since those two are rarely found far apart. I told Phoebs she needed to do five good posts before I'd link to her, and she did five in one day. Acorn don't fall far from the tree. Go check it out, and give her a twinkle in the comments section!