In the Garden 2: Frogs

My inspiration to create my water garden was Ella's gift of a "Grow Your Own Lily Pad" kit. She told me that Frogs would come to sit on them. That's where frogs sit, lily pads. I thought that since the garden would be 5 feet above ground and a mile or more from any permanent body of water that it was highly unlikely frogs would come to visit. I stand corrected.

In the Garden

It was Wife and Daughter that inspired me to create my own Water Garden!

Having the lilies  in their own ecosystem where I can be at eye level has taught me about the lives of these creatures and how our distinctions between plants and animal and everything else that lives are purely subjective.

The Blessings

 I had passed it every day on my way home, at the entrance ramp at the beginning of Ellington Parkway just North of downtown Nashville, a simple cross made of a perforated steel channel, ubiquitous in construction, known as unistrut. It is on the public right of way adjacent to one of Nashville low cost housing projects and conjures many images juxtaposed as it is against the poorly maintained apartment buildings that have sheltered people suffering from despair and sickness for decades. This is just one of hundreds of such monuments to highway deaths I have seen on roads here in the South. I try to take a moment to realize the meaning of loss these crosses represent and honor the public, if anonymous, display of grief.

I nearly sideswiped the car beside me. As tried to merge onto Ellington I found the gray cross now completely covered in purple, red, and pink silk flowers. For years I had no evidence that it had ever been touched by human hands. The dour specter now seemed to be singing, brought to life by this human kindness. But the song faded. As the weeks went by the flowers tuned to white from the Sun. As the Months passed they turned as gray as the steel. And as Winter came and went the flowers fell away. Last year's flood washed away the cross bar where once hung memory and solace. I wonder, were the flowers a commemoration of the passing of the soul this cross represented. Where they in honor of the person who had left it there years before, now gone to be with the one they so loved. Did the memories of the one they lost fade away, or did they become to painful to bare any longer. I will never know. The Cross is silent.

***

It is a blessing, that the dead are always faithful. Their deeds now recounted and numbered and relived by those that still have dreams and needs of their own. The living search that past for the kindness they need today and with what they find they embody the souls of the absent and form a cradle for their remembrance. It is a blessing for the dead that their lives now flow not with the revolutions of our Earth but the revelations of our hearts.

It is a blessing for the living to always be faithful. To guard your thoughts and words and deeds as you would eternity. To always act in the best interest of those that love you. My Father told me, when I was a child, that if something is so important to you that so foremost in your mind that you can say it when you see a falling star that that wish will come true. I will try to say “ I will earn my daughters faith in me.” before the light can die.

A Mistake

I was working in the studio trying desperately to fix something I felt was a blunder. I ran from the room to get a rag and some water and in the moment when I collected myself before resuming I saw the beauty that had been created on it's own, perhaps on it's own. I guess sometimes the correction is the mistake.

Painted Ponies

I had watched them for several years and didn’t think much of it; a boy riding a paint pony with his father walking besides the two holding the lead line of the halter. I just thought the Father was a little over protective since the child was nearly my age judging from his height. It wasn’t until the rider’s feet hung half way between the pony’s belly and the ground that I became concerned. At first I thought my parents were angry when I asked if the teenager was too big to be riding him. “You just don’t need to worry yourself about that pony. We should all be so well taken care of.” It was a double team. “They don’t go that far. It’s barely a mile to the lake from their place. Besides he barely weighs a hundred pounds!” It wasn’t anger though; it was more like fear, more like dread. There was something else, something they wouldn’t tell, or couldn’t tell me. It got quiet at the dinner table after that. They didn’t look at me. They didn't look at each other.

Now they had a element of mystery for me. I stationed myself in the boat at the north end of our lake where they passed by every Saturday and Sunday and I could observe. On Sunday they were like clockwork, one PM, after church. The Father and Son dressed alike -matching actually - khakis, work boots, flannel shirts and St. Louis Cardinals baseball caps. They had the same sandy brown hair. They wore matching eyeglasses.  But the Boy’s clothes fit differently. His shirt was untucked and oversized and his neck and wrists swam in their openings.  He was emaciated. His head wobbled as the pony walked and he leaned to one side. But they smiled, always, Father and Son the same smile. The paint was fat and slick and spotless, and if ponies could smile I am sure he would have too.

***

My half Arabian gelding, Banner, knew what was about to happen. The pavement dead ended into a long abandoned coal company road and the gravel that would harm his hooves had long ago washed away.  I shortened the stirrups on the old hunt seat English saddle to nearly Jockey length and gathered the reins in either hand short and tight as he strained in anticipation. My barely audible verbal click was the downbeat. He coiled into a half rear and leapt down the road. A hundred yards flashed by before I could catch my next breath and this was punctuated by the impact of landing as he jumped a mud puddle. Then we came to the stretch where he always turned on that extra gear he had. Standing in a tight crouch with my head beside Banners neck I was fixed in the space we shared except for my hands, now in front of me, moved forward and back as each stride lengthed. His mane whipped my face and the world was a swirl of light and early autumn’s first falling leaves. Four beats and silence. Four beats and silence. In the silence, when all four hooves were off the ground, we were flying.
Banner pranced in a hard trot for half the trip home. He was never one to bolt for the barn, but the weather was cool and it took him a while to relax after all the excitement. He finally slowed to a walk as we turned down Parklane which would take us home.  This is where I always saw the happy trio, as I had come to think of them and I realize I had not seen them in weeks. I had never spoken to them but we always waved . It was too cold to spray Banner with the hose , which he loved when it was warm, so I took extra time to walk him until all the sweat had dryed where the saddle pad had been. His winter coat was already coming in and brushing out the salt and the mud that had splashed all over him from our run worked up a sweat of my own. I turned him loose to rejoin his pasture mates and immediately he laid down and rolled in his usual spot in the middle of the pasture. All the brushing was erased in an instant but that's part of the bargain, brushing your horse after a ride is not optional. I kissed my Mom on the cheek and grabbed a fried chicken leg and a tall glass of milk from the refrigerator. We sat at the kitchen table as I talked about my ride, and school, and college the next fall. "you know mom I haven't seen those two and that little paint lately, have you?" She turned white, visibly shaken. She took my glass and plate and turned to rinse them in the sink. She looked out the window as she methodically wiped the plate dry. “He died two nights ago. I was working in the emergency room when they brought him in. He.." She couldn't finish the sentence. "You never get used to seeing the children go, especially like that. It's just not right."

***

Horses are spiritual beings. They are the substance of dreams. You can learn a lot about justice by spending time in their company as well. Foremost, don't expect too much from it, at least not all at once. The same type of noble beast would carry the boy and I down the same path for just a little while. These horses bound us to our families in joy and sorrow and gave us dreams of our own. He would leave his horse with the living and I would leave mine to go to college. I would get to drive cars. I would learn to make beautiful things. I would kiss girls.

It wasn’t until my own little girl was born that I learned my Mother had taken thalidomide during pregnancy. For her, to have healthy children was it’s own spiritual burden. When you are standing in the warmth and sunshine it is easy to see the grace of God to be as wide as an ocean. But when you see the pain of others you realize that grace has a border as hard and clear as the edge of a razor. You know what side of the line you are on today. You know the line will be drawn anew tomorrow. So In the morning I will kiss my perfect, healthy daughter awake. I will try to be a good father, and pay my debt to painted ponies.

New Collage November #2 Progress - Continued on my new site One Child's Icon

Day 2 Morning

Petals for underwater section

Day 3 Morning

Day 4 Morning

Day 6 Morning

Day 4 detail

Day 6 Detail

One Hundred

The grizzled old Nashville song writer chastised the audience “You’ll never be a songwriter by writing two songs a year.” It was one of those events I was paid to be a technical baby sitter. My job was to be there in case something went wrong. We were in a cozy hotel ballroom and chances of disaster at the “Song Writers Symposium” were remote in the extreme. Being devoted to my paycheck, however, I sat behind the lighting console reading a book until this guy in his 2 pack a day gravel baritone started talking.  “You want to write the perfect song, but if the song don’t flow when you’re writing it, it won’t flow when someone’s singing it.” He had my attention. “I set my sights on writing one hundred songs. The first few dozen were junk, but I got better and I didn’t give up. I got better and faster at the same time. Number ninety eight got recorded. Number ninety nine made it to the top forty on the Country charts which at the time meant I could afford to buy a new car. Number  one  hundred made it to number five on the charts and after that I quit my job to write songs full time.  It took me a little short of three years. You have to let go of a song sometime.  Once someone sings it on a record it ain’t yours no more anyway”. I’m sure the lawyers that had the stage later that day would have argued that last point. I was reading intently by then and never heard a word they had to say. 

When a friend told me that something in one of my posts helped her at a time she really needed help, I was taken a little aback. I write for myself.  In many ways it is purgative. It is like placing troubles on a leaf and letting them float down the river. The Songwriter’s words came back to me, however, when I noticed I had passed 40 posts. My writing was getting better. At the same time, I was posting more often.  It hurts now to go back and look at my early things. I had wanted to write about things important to me, but my thoughts, while clear in my head, where incoherent on the page.   There are so many things I want to say but I still lack the ability. Perhaps after 50 more posts the words will flow, perhaps sing.

The confidence my progression as a writer has given me has inspired me to again follow the path I set out on when I was 17. I will be an Artist. I have decided to produce 100 Water Lilly Icons. I will not dally. I have set a goal of producing one every two weeks.  It is enough time to be creative but not enough to ponder. I must paint, not think. I must trust my instincts, accept accidents and use them in my composition. It has become a great lesson in loving life, as it flows. 

90 Left

The finished Collage from the post One Child's Icon.

Grief

I'm not OK.


It's been two months since my Mother died. I can walk around without falling because after the miscarriage I learned how to pretend there was solid earth beneath my feet. I learned to work through the sensation of plummeting down the pit. It is an act. It is a conceit. I try to time and confine the worst despair to the rare moments I can be alone. I fail often at this. It still comes at random moments. Those are the easy times. Knowing what brings it on is the scary thing. It was the "O" word that got me. Orphan; the word folded me up like a cheap lawn chair. I am a Parent. I know about bottomless love, the unquenchable pride. The people who felt that way about me are dead.

I miss being a son.

Do I sound angry? I am. But if you sit with me a while I will only be sad soon. After that I may be happy for a brief time that my mother is no longer imprisoned a body that tormented her. After that I will be very quiet; when I realize again what that means and curse myself for it. I will be quiet for a long time.

Don't tell me it will get better. My Father died nearly three decades ago and I miss him every day. It gets worse because I understand more about my loss. I can add up all the things that should have been.

If there is one thing all the living can share it is grief. The feeling is exactly the same for the poorest child or the richest man. Know this. When you look into the eyes of stranger, behind whatever expression the eyes can veil, there is loss, infinite longing for someone they still love. If there isn't, there will be. If knowing this is not enough for you to treat each and every person with all the compassion you can muster, then Hell cannot damn you. You are damned as you walk this Earth.

Please forgive my anger, it will fade. In a little while I will smile, then I will be quiet.

One Child's Icon

It was my wife Rowena that taught me. The bread in the Priest’s hands is not a symbol of the body of Christ. It is the body of Christ. The wine is the blood of Christ.  An icon offers the same chance for communion. The young girl at the Gates of Dawn in Vilnius does more than view an artifact. She becomes part of its history, the history of the church that kept this image for centuries and the community that has protected the church. She participates in the embodiment of a young Palestinian girl in fear for her life and the life of her newborn child fleeing a great evil. She becomes part of an ongoing act of creation; the ethereal eternal life of the meaning of Faith.

Whether it is the story of the Last Supper, the Ghost Dance of the First Nations, the  Sufi Sama or the Silver Madonna each culture offers communion.  A transcendent and epiphanic experience that embodies a larger understanding. But it is always a work of art that is the point of contact, the navel from which Vishnu’s lotus springs. In Eastern cultures the Lotus represents many important concepts and appears in countless images and sculptures. One image pervasive to  Hinduism is Vishnu in repose, Lakshmi at his feet, as he dreams the Universe. A lotus grows from his navel and within the lotus is Brahma, the creator.  Everywhere the Buddha steps a lotus  flower blooms. The opening petals embody the expansion of the soul. It embodies the ascension of the spirit from the earthly depths to the light of Heaven, the spirit that cannot be blemished.

It was the holy book “Outdoor Life Magazine” that led me.  “Lunker Largemouth Lurk Beneath the Lily Pads” proclaimed the cover that featured a Bass with a feathered jig in its mouth soaring above a water lily. It looked just like the five pounder that hung on my friend's wall, and if there was anything my twelve-year-old self wanted it was a stuffed fish I could call my own. I knew just where to go. The east shore of City Lake was covered with Lily pads, completely covered. There was not an opening for my cast much larger than a truck tire and it was nearly impossible to reel in the lure without snagging the pads' long underwater stems.  I decided to try the old standby of bait and bobber. But as it turns out the promised bass were not fond of this combo and I would spend many fishless hours watching the red and white plastic orb float motionlessly. Eventually I left the rod and reel at home and spent the days at the water’s edge amongst the enormous purple, pink and white flowers in solitude

This was my first Aesthetic experience. Something I chose for myself that had no desired outcome save its own existence.  It is here that I learned about the bond of beauty and silence.  I came because those two things dwelled there. I told no one, not even my family, of this. I didn’t know how.  In college I tried. Our Eastern Art class spent a couple of days on the symbolism of the lotus. I found it quite exciting that half the world found significance in the same thing I did. But my understanding of the lotus was very different from the text and since my ideas wouldn’t be on the test they were greeted with a profound blank stare by the circle of friends that study grouped Art History 205.

As an artist I don’t just want to make pretty pictures; I want to give. And if I were to give you anything it would be the experience of being a young boy learning how beautiful the world is. How beautiful he is. We would follow the Tao down to the low places that most avoid and although we would walk through mud to get there, we would not be blemished. We would be there to witness the expansion of his soul. We would travel Vishnu’s universe together. We would never leave this place.

Until I can offer this experience, I will offer you its familiar. I will take paper and ink and paint and whatever else helps me find the image that I have held dear for four decades. I will bind all these things together. I will offer you One Child’s Icon. 

Family Icon

Icon 2

Why the scent of turpentine summons the spirit of my Father

Hanging on the wall in the part of our kitchen that is now Ella's one room school house is a painting of my Father's. It is one of my most prized possessions. Not because it is a great painting. It is not my Father's best, however we were together when he made it. He set up our easels side by side at Scales Lake State Park by one of the small lakes just off the road that circles the main lake on a warm Fall Saturday. He painted with oils. I had finger paints. He had just returned from his third war and now the art lessons that had begun two years before could begin in earnest again.  He painted trees by the water. I painted "baby trees" just Autumn colors with no trunks or branches,  swirls of yellow and red and green. I was just seven, but I remember the feel of the plastic paint between my fingers and the paper and the scent of my Father's turpentine.

Ella was asleep on our bed when Rowena presented me a page of her day's homework and shattered my illusion of control over what the future shall be. The exercise was to diagram the "hidden lines" in the painting Bathers at Asnières by Seurat. On the page were two lines that not only perfectly illustrated the internal composition but recreated visual impact of the original through their weight and sensitivity. My daughter has the eyes of an artist. The hands of an artist. She has an artists soul. Until I saw these lines on the page something inside me had hoped this was not true. For a year Ella has told everyone that she was going to going to be a Veterinarian. Yes, please, I thought to myself; be a Vet and your life will be easier than mine has been.
"This is my Son. He's an artist." There was never any equivocation when my Father said this. No parent has ever introduced their Daughter the investment banker or Son the engineer with any more pride.  In the decades since his death I told myself that he just didn't know how hard it is to be an artist. He didn't know about the doubt and derision. I wondered, how the oldest Son of a coal miner that quit school after sixth grade to labor plowing the fields behind the family mule would want me to work through the poverty and struggle to scrape up money for paint? Now I know. Two lines on a sheet of paper later I know. My Father wanted many things for me, but my Father knew me. My life was never going to be easy. I am too deeply in love with struggle and I do not readily accept the things I cannot change.

Ella has a finely tuned sense of Justice. She lives an honest, truthful, loving way and I know that because of this her life will be difficult. There is nothing I can do to ease her way, short of changing the world. So I will do what I can do. I will show her beautiful ways to see the world. I will give her ways to show the world what is inside her. I will set up our easels side by side in a quiet place, and together we will paint the world around us.