Waiting on a friend

Don’t be dismayed at good-byes. A farewell is necessary before you can meet again. And meeting again, after moments or lifetimes, is certain for those who are friends.

Richard Bach

Pull

A blood red moon rises above the mountains.

The shadow of an owl passes through it on his nightly run.

The air hangs still like an expectant breathe.

Even the crickets call seems somehow muted, distant .

Through the woods two glowing yellow eyes peer, and then another set and another set join in,

Raccoons waking for there nightly dance.

Still I feel it.

Some where out there

Just beyond the shadows edge, it lays

waiting

wanting

Calling me out

to run in the red glow and feel the thrum of the night.

Feel it pulse in my veins

cloud my vision and intoxicate my brain.

The pull of the moon

Lunacy

Moon madness

the call to birth

The urge to howl

I am spell bound.

bathed in soft light and shadows

I am gone.

Awakening

A very long time ago I lived in the city. I remember the sounds, the life flight helicopters going over head all day and night, the traffic , the sirens all of those  city sounds. The way you could rarely see the stars and never ever the milky way. I remember the press of people, the neighbors whose lives existed completely separate of yours and yet were constantly over lapping in someway or another. To this day I remember the smell in the back hall from one of the tenants who used to cook this meal every couple of weeks. It smelled like cigarettes, Phys. Ed. , baby diapers and roadkill.( no , I am totally serious. )There was the crazy man we called the colonel who would bark orders at the top of his lungs in the middle of the night and walk around in the top half of his military uniform and his boxers. I lived there a while, and I have good memories, but I am NOT a city person.
I was in NYC the last 2 days. It’s a long story, so the cliff notes are I have a friend who won tickets to see Melissa Etheridge at the Hard Rock Cafe. She can talk me into most things, so I went as her Guest.
I was standing in Time square looking up at all the buildings feeling them pushing in on me and listening to the horns and squeal of traffic feeling like I was out of body. I noticed I saw no children in the city.I am not sure what that means or how I feel about it, but there it is. We had gotten a hotel room in NJ and taken the train in to Penn Station and walked the few blocks to the Hard rock. We had to stand outside and wait for a while before they let us in. My pal was having a good time flirting and chatting it up with some of the others and I was hungry so I left her to go get a burger and a beer in the Cafe. My Burger was 15$ and my Beer was 8$, A little sticker shock there! While i was sitting at the bar watching old “Poison”, “Stray Cats” and “Cyndi Lauper videos I had a very attractive young lady try and solicit me. I have to say I have never been solicited by a prostitute in my life, not even in sin city. It was a hell of a shock. I was polite in my decline, but woah! let’s not have a repeat of that performance shall we??!!!
Melissa is a wonderful performer and her new Album ‘Awakening’ is a jewel. She has a song that she says “love is what you get, when love is what you speak” a message more people need to hear, and a powerful ballad called “The kingdom of Heaven”. The show was really awesome, marred only by the slight show stealing of former VP Al Gore….but hey, I guess he’s a fan too! So he gets a nod for good taste in music.
The train ride back to NJ was entertaining , while my friend slept/rested I had a delightful conversation with a homeless bum. When he asked me where I was from ” Ya ain’t from around here! Where you from?” and I told him a little shack in the woods in the mountains, he said ” ewwwwiii man ! I’d go sh*t-house-f**king-stir crazy if I hads to watch the grass grow! ” After a little piece of quiet he asked me if we were going to NJ. He said he never goes to New Jersey because ” You know how dey are!” with a look over a very hairy grey eyebrow.
I will go to my grave wondering what the heck he meant by that!
Anyway, I am Home again. Thanking life that I am not living in that city trying to breath and looking for the tree that grows in Brooklyn. Glad that I went for a great many reasons.

Life at the booth

Weekends are long and filled with so much. I remember as a child looking forward to the weekends with great anticipation. I wanted the week to fly so that I could be free from school, studies, work or whatever kept me in it’s chains during the week. How serendipitous it is that now, the weekends are so full! My life has reversed itself. I now work on the weekends, although in all honesty shows are a truly different kind of work. They require a certain level of calm, a certain mental stress that sometimes can completely wear me out. I claim to be the hermit, and tell you with truth from my heart that my people skills are lacking, especially in the confrontational front. Can you imagine the mental exhaustion having folks look over your art for hours? Some will say nothing, some say pleasant things, and some say things you want to leap across the booth and shake some sense into. It is wearing on your soul. I call them TV people , they are the folks who walk around an art show, something juried, that you have to have skill to get into,( This is not a Flea Market) I am surround by artisans who have poured forth such inspiration, only to have someone walk up and say” Will you take 2$ for this?”. They spend the entire show walking around talking on their cell phone. Why pay money to get into this show just to talk on your phone? They come into your booth and ask things like” I am looking for a bowl like the one Oprah has on her table when they did that interview with her…do you have something like that?” Or my personnel favorite is when they come in as a couple or a group and one picks something up and says ” Oh! isn’t this nice?” and the other one says ” Yeah, I saw something similar at Walmart for 4.99$” so the first one looks at me and says ” Will you take 5$ for this?” and I say “no” and then the other one says ” Why the hell not? she can get it at Walmart for that?!”and then you have this mental debate…do you spend 10 minutes trying to explain that the one at Walmart is probably nice, but it’s not handmade, it probably production made in China, and it costs you more that 5 dollars to make. Or do you just say ” Because the prices are not negotiable, thats what the artist put on it so thats what you sell it for.” Either way you know your in for a debate of such utter stupidity that the mind boggles at it. I am not even going to mention some of the insane Religious comments I get. It is safe to say if you place a quote on anything that is not Christian in origin you are opening yourself up to some really interesting hostility.

But thankfully the weekend is over and I can go back to my studio and make some things for next weeks show. How wonderful a week day is!

Perpective….

Use it, or lose it.

Mikes Stuff

My buddy Mike is one of those remarkable men who has just so many talents. He is a fantastic musician, he plays up right bass and guitar , plus he writes awesome music. He does really interesting and different stained glass pieces and then he does wood work. He started making these for his kids, he wasn’t into them picking up all kinds of stuff and shooting at each other, so he decided that a little bashing with swords and shields was more in order, as he says” Boys are gonna be boys, you’ve just got to redirect them towards weapons with grace.” His kids range in age from 18 months to 15 years and they all love these things,( even the 15 year olds girlfriend)

Anyway, He struggles with his demons ( and I don’t mean his kids) and he walks the straight and narrow to the best of his ability. He makes other items out of wood, (see the last picture) and they are some beautiful pieces. He and I are doing a craft show together in a couple weeks. I am looking forward to sharing some space with him. I am done bragging on him, I just need to put some of his stuff out there, as he is not a computer person, in fact he lives almost completely off grid. Love to be able to give him some positive feed back on his stuff, this is going to be his first show.

Sow good service.

It was a late night , My head is still ringing from the sounds of the air compressor, the hammers, drills and other loud tools. However the ringing is a small price to pay for the new shelving that is up at a local art center. A lot of community service goes a long way.

I have old black and white photo’s of my Great Grandparents working on a dance hall sometime in the late 1890’s. It was a volunteer program to help start a community center for immigrants from a particular cultural demographic. Before my grandmother passed away, she used to tell me stories about the work that she and her brothers would do around the ” hall”. They didn’t have a lot of money, so to help contribute to the community they would each do different tasks. She would wax the dance floor. She said in those days that was such hard work! First you had to scrub the floor with lye soap! It would burn your eyes and skin something terrible. Then she said you had this rag that you would put wax polish in and you had to coat the entire floor, after it set up you had to go back and buff the whole thing. Can you imagine how BIG a dance floor was? I have a photo of my brothers oldest girl when she was two out on that dance floor my Yaya used to polish, trust me, it was huge! She said her brothers, picked up trash and one even re-shingled the roof after a storm. She took a great deal of pride in the fact that her father helped build that Dance hall.

Community is a vague concept these days. We live in a culture that wants to know,”whats in it for me?”. The mere idea of spending time, money and effort on something you may never see again is so alien to a great many people. No one may ever know that it was my efforts that brought about the shelving, but I don’t need or require any acknowledgments, thats not why I did it. I did it because they needed them. I was raised that way, if something needs done and you can do it, what are you waiting for?

Community, it is something even we hermits are part of.

Great

The phone rings in my little shack in the woods

“Hello?” I answer with a smile in my voice.

” Hey ! How are you?” a friend asks.

“Great! What’s up?” I respond

A moment of quiet ….

“Great? really? wow…umm Great?” The uncertainty heavy in their voice.

” Yeah, absolutely great. I mean it, Life is good, I am so blessed. What’s up with you?”

and then the conversation wanders off. It is almost as if they can’t vent if I am in a good space. I know it’s been years since my life was on track, since there was a daily abundance of Joy. I try and explain to folks that I had to go through those years of Hell to get here. I had to be in the long dark, to learn invaluable lessons, not only about my self, but about life and coping skills. I had to learn what I value and what I was willing to do to be happy.

Happiness is looking at what you have and being blown away by the wonder of it. I know that the whole world will never be at that Utopian place, I know I have good days, great days and days that I want to put my head in the oven ( even though it’s electric) I want to hear how my friends are, no matter where they are on the road. It doesn’t bring me down to hear the woe, I care , whether I have been in that place/space or not I will still light a candle that blessings circle back to you as quick as they can.

It is not arrogance that makes me say ” I am Great ” . It is a deep understanding of where I am, who I am , and what I will allow myself to be. I have arrived at that point in my life that I will no longer give away parts of myself, I will no longer except anything less than what I deserve, ( even if it is the occasional swift kick in the but) and I will be true to who I am and what I believe.

So, If your day was long, your burdens heavy, and all seemed in darkness, I light this candle for you. That it’s light might shine to show you a way, that it might shine to give you hope, and most of all that it shines with my love.

If your day was great, if everything fell into place and laughter and love was yours in abundance, ain’t it great? I throw my arms wide to the heavens and say “Thank you!” from all of us whose day rocked!

Sweet sharp tang

In it’s simplest form, Life is all to brief. The realization of this comes and goes with the passing of days. Some days we are so connected to our pulse, to the life we have…the life we lead. Then there are the days that pass in a blur of movement, we neither acknowledge  our mortality nor register the passing of yet another moment. What brings us with a *Snap* back into that space where we recognize our brevity in this realm? Is it a near miss on the road? The story of a friend of a friend who has cancer? A early morning phone call to tell us a brother is in the hospital after having had a heart attack? Or even something less dramatic as watching the leaves upon the trees begin to die? Their last moments so brilliant in color, so graceful in the way they fall to the earth…

I spent the day canning Grape jelly, I went out on a limb and threw Lavender  from my garden in the pot and was rewarded for my brave and daring with a sweet fragrant tang that makes my taste buds smile. I watched the poplars begin there yellow song of leaving.  Waited all day for the phone call to tell me that a  brother was doing well, and recovering from heart procedures. I am blessed to still be amongst the living, to enjoy the myriad of emotions that this season makes my soul prey to.

Time for tea, and to watch the Autumn dance…

Muddy paws…

Spent the day playing in clay, reading and drinking tea. I struggle to get rid of this obnoxious cold which still has me in it’s grasp. I will eventually prevail, ahh to have the recovery properties of youth.

Sigh…

Cernnonus sits wet drying on the table. He is a simple mask, nothing elaborate, nothing sinister. When he has been fired and finished I will post a small photo of him. I am hopeful that he will find a good home.

I have some dragonflies that need to be soldered, and a basket that is almost done. The basket is for a birthday celebration. A small token for some one whose sunny smile brightens my days.

I need to feed the pixies and clean my space.

The Door

The traveler was weary and worn, his foot steps fell quiet in the dark woods. How hard life is, how long the journey. When he felt he could move no more, he stopped and put his hand upon a tree. He used it’s solid strength to hold him there. Hold him upright and steady as he took in deep drafts of air. On an exhale he slowly slid his hand down the trunk of the tree and eased his frame unto the ground. For all the ache and woe etched in his movements, he was graceful when he finally lowered himself that last distance to the ground. Gentle on the earth, the leaves giving cushion in soft crunch as he leaned back in repose.

Long would be the night, the moon like a dragons eye stared down at him from the heavens, winking in and out through the lingering autumn leaves. The wind moaned down the mountain making the fallen leaves dance in shadow. Some might fear the magic of a forest at night, the mind making more of the sounds and delights, but the tired old man sat quiet,his eyes open and unafraid. What miles he had seen, what wonders, what horrors, no gift given with out a price to be paid.

As he sat ever so still, he thought he heard a sound, like footsteps far off. With out moving ,he strained his ears to hear ,for in his exhausted state he was easy prey for the ruffians of the night.

Click

He heard the quiet sound of a door being opened and then

Click

the sound of it being closed.

Sleep to near at hand for him to move, he determined that he was near some cottage in the woods, and before dawn he needed to make haste, lest he be found. In the lullaby of the night he drifted off to sleep.

When he awoke to the sounds of morning, he found himself warmed by a blanket of leaves. The wind must have blown them here, he thought as he slowly stretched his stiffened limbs, how kind mother moon was, he smiled to himself.

Frozen, he stared at the base of the tree he had come to rest at.His eyes opening wider and wider…..

A door, small as his hand, with a broom no bigger than a child’s toy.

His mouth fell open, he looked about in confusion..what????