A daily dose of creative suspense.

journal

Wandering

Sitting at the end of Skyline drive and the beginning of Blueridge parkway. The beauty takes my breath away. I was looking for artistic inspiration and here it is. An artist should always leave their studio now and then to recharge their creativity.
I have write quickly before we lose connection again. Not much connection with technology way put here in the ole hills of Virginny.


Couch surfers from Australia

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Swim like a catfish!

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My Christmas Story

My Christmas Story

                       I sat cross-legged on the cold cracked linoleum floor clutching my new Chatty Cathy doll. The employees of the “Two Guys” department store had just handed it to me. I whispered a shy “Thank you.”

My father had told us at supper, that Santa would not be coming this year and I had accepted that. Even at the age of six I knew we were poor. Dirt poor. I learned not to expect much.

But miracles do happen and there I sat hugging a brand new doll. True, when I pulled her string at the back of her neck, she only squeaked and babbled. But I loved her anyway. She had blond bobbed hair and a maroon band hat that is held in place by a bobby pin with a circle of pearls. Her matching coat is made of a tweed material and buttons up with gold buttons. Underneath her knee length coat is a yellow cotton dress. My favorite color. She wears white cotton panties and little patent leather shoes.

I was shivering in my thin nightgown not only from wonderment and joy but also from the cold. The only heat in the house was from a coal cooking stove in the middle of the living room. It was made of white enamel and had red pin striping on the edges. The black cast metal circles on the top can be pulled aside with a metal handle that fits neatly into a groove on the side. My mother poured a few more chunks of coal into the hole with the rusty little shovel that sits atop of the gleaming black lumps of coal in the bucket next to the stove. But the bucket was almost empty so we had to be careful what we used. The coal company didn’t seem to catch on to the Christmas spirit.

My little brother, Larry’s upturned face shines in the glow of the Christmas tree lights. The Electric Company appeared this christmas eve with all the other Santa’s Elves and turned on the electricity so Daddy’s christmas tree lights twinkled, adding to the celebration. Larry pushed a new red metal fire truck along the floor making siren noises. He didn’t care if the ladder is bent in half. The department store had brought us all the broken toys from the return department.

On the pitted chrome table laid a cardboard box overflowing with foods I had never seen before much less tasted. Some kind of fruit, oblong and gold-colored stuck out of the box; it’s top shock of green leaves standing stiff and jagged. A criss-cross pattern covered its surface. A large clear jar full of unpopped popcorn displays the colors of the rainbow. Would the popcorn still be colored when it popped? The box was full of cans of food and boxes of mashed potatoes and cereal with promises of fun and gifts inside.

A blond pony-tailed lady in a pink fuzzy dress and white fur coat from the phone company brought a fat turkey and plopped it down on the table with a smile. She didn’t turn the phone on though, but that’s okay because it had been broken for  a long time and I liked playing with it.

The table looked ready to topple over with the heavy load. It wasn’t used to so much food. We usually ate government surplus food; which was mostly huge burlap bags of sticky white rice and red tough hot dogs. We also ate wild animals my Daddy poached for us to eat. I liked wild rabbit the best. Our chairs were pushed against the metal table. My chair was red vinyl with silver piping around the edges. I loved that chair. I drug it home from the junkyard myself. The chrome was all rusty and pitted but there was only one tear in the backrest.

I was very careful not to sit to close to the “hole”. I didn’t want anything to happen to my new Chatty Cathy so I watched the hole out of the corner of my eye. On Saturday nights my father and his nine brothers would come over and bring instruments to play polkas late into the night. One night when my mother was at the hospital having my little brother Jeffery, a beautiful lady came to the door and she wore very high sharp heels. I sat under the table and watched her heel sink into the soft , rotting linoleum, making a hole that allowed snakes to slither up into our kitchen from the crawl space under the house. I always watched that hole, because I was sure that things could be sucked into to it just as easily as things came out of it.

Our unusual house had once belonged to my grandfather who had owned a coal delivery company, that really was a cover for a bootleg operation. Our house used to be the office and a set of ornate bookcases ran against the back wall. On the bookshelf were several sets of encyclopedias and beautifully illustrated children’s books that inspired me to become not only an illustrator but also a writer when I grew up. Not one of the sets is complete because my mother would order the books but never be able to pay for them.

The center of the bookshelf is kept bare because the panel could be pushed aside to reveal a deep cave behind the house from when it hid the contra-band whiskey. We loved to play in the damp, dark cave. it still retained a faint scent of bath tub gin. We would pretend to be pirates, or dragons or boot-legers like our grandfather. The house is built into the side of a steep hill. In the summer drips of water run down the wall and mold grew in the corners.

That christmas eve, people from the communitity just kept knocking on our door. I don’t even know how they knew about our almost ruined christmas. I didn’t drink any of the hot chocolate the uniformed policemen brought for us in two big thermoses. I didn’t want to have to run down the snow-covered path at night to the outhouse to pee. We had no water in our house unless my daddy got in the car and brought it home in big buckets. We used to have water but the big cement cistern in front of the kitchen got full of mosquitoes and we drank it and we all got typhoid fever. Daddy got the sickest and couldn’t work at the shoe factory for a long time.

After all the people left my father looked up from his glass of vodka and ordered us to bed.  Our beds have no sheets and the little metal buttons of the mattress dug into my hip when I turned in bed. I pulled the thin, tattered brown wool blanket over my shoulder and smiled at my new doll. She always smiled back. I was afraid to let anything stick out over the edge of the bed because of the rats that comes out at night to search for any crumbs we may have left behind. Just a week ago my father killed one with the coal shovel right next to my bed. He slammed it on the head to knock it out and then he used the edge to slice it in half. I screamed and then peeked though my fingers and watched the tail still twitching even though it was separated from its brain.

I,m sure those kind people all forgot the Christmas that they brought happiness to a rag tag family with too many dirty children, but I won,t forget and I raise my pen to give tribute to every kind heart that reaches out to other lives not only on Christmas but everyday.


My Christmas Story

My Christmas Story

                       I sat cross-legged on the cold cracked linoleum floor clutching my new Chatty Cathy doll. The employees of the “Two Guys” department store had just handed it to me. I whispered a shy “Thank you.”

My father had told us at supper, that Santa would not be coming this year and I had accepted that. Even at the age of six I knew we were poor. Dirt poor. I learned not to expect much.

But miracles do happen and there I sat hugging a brand new doll. True, when I pulled her string at the back of her neck, she only squeaked and babbled. But I loved her anyway. She had blond bobbed hair and a maroon band hat that is held in place by a bobby pin with a circle of pearls. Her matching coat is made of a tweed material and buttons up with gold buttons. Underneath her knee length coat is a yellow cotton dress. My favorite color. She wears white cotton panties and little patent leather shoes.

I was shivering in my thin nightgown not only from wonderment and joy but also from the cold. The only heat in the house was from a coal cooking stove in the middle of the living room. It was made of white enamel and had red pin striping on the edges. The black cast metal circles on the top can be pulled aside with a metal handle that fits neatly into a groove on the side. My mother poured a few more chunks of coal into the hole with the rusty little shovel that sits atop of the gleaming black lumps of coal in the bucket next to the stove. But the bucket was almost empty so we had to be careful what we used. The coal company didn’t seem to catch on to the Christmas spirit.

My little brother, Larry’s upturned face shines in the glow of the Christmas tree lights. The Electric Company appeared this christmas eve with all the other Santa’s Elves and turned on the electricity so Daddy’s christmas tree lights twinkled, adding to the celebration. Larry pushed a new red metal fire truck along the floor making siren noises. He didn’t care if the ladder is bent in half. The department store had brought us all the broken toys from the return department.

On the pitted chrome table laid a cardboard box overflowing with foods I had never seen before much less tasted. Some kind of fruit, oblong and gold-colored stuck out of the box; it’s top shock of green leaves standing stiff and jagged. A criss-cross pattern covered its surface. A large clear jar full of unpopped popcorn displays the colors of the rainbow. Would the popcorn still be colored when it popped? The box was full of cans of food and boxes of mashed potatoes and cereal with promises of fun and gifts inside.

A blond pony-tailed lady in a pink fuzzy dress and white fur coat from the phone company brought a fat turkey and plopped it down on the table with a smile. She didn’t turn the phone on though, but that’s okay because it had been broken for  a long time and I liked playing with it.

The table looked ready to topple over with the heavy load. It wasn’t used to so much food. We usually ate government surplus food; which was mostly huge burlap bags of sticky white rice and red tough hot dogs. We also ate wild animals my Daddy poached for us to eat. I liked wild rabbit the best. Our chairs were pushed against the metal table. My chair was red vinyl with silver piping around the edges. I loved that chair. I drug it home from the junkyard myself. The chrome was all rusty and pitted but there was only one tear in the backrest.

I was very careful not to sit to close to the “hole”. I didn’t want anything to happen to my new Chatty Cathy so I watched the hole out of the corner of my eye. On Saturday nights my father and his nine brothers would come over and bring instruments to play polkas late into the night. One night when my mother was at the hospital having my little brother Jeffery, a beautiful lady came to the door and she wore very high sharp heels. I sat under the table and watched her heel sink into the soft , rotting linoleum, making a hole that allowed snakes to slither up into our kitchen from the crawl space under the house. I always watched that hole, because I was sure that things could be sucked into to it just as easily as things came out of it.

Our unusual house had once belonged to my grandfather who had owned a coal delivery company, that really was a cover for a bootleg operation. Our house used to be the office and a set of ornate bookcases ran against the back wall. On the bookshelf were several sets of encyclopedias and beautifully illustrated children’s books that inspired me to become not only an illustrator but also a writer when I grew up. Not one of the sets is complete because my mother would order the books but never be able to pay for them.

The center of the bookshelf is kept bare because the panel could be pushed aside to reveal a deep cave behind the house from when it hid the contra-band whiskey. We loved to play in the damp, dark cave. it still retained a faint scent of bath tub gin. We would pretend to be pirates, or dragons or boot-legers like our grandfather. The house is built into the side of a steep hill. In the summer drips of water run down the wall and mold grew in the corners.

That christmas eve, people from the communitity just kept knocking on our door. I don’t even know how they knew about our almost ruined christmas. I didn’t drink any of the hot chocolate the uniformed policemen brought for us in two big thermoses. I didn’t want to have to run down the snow-covered path at night to the outhouse to pee. We had no water in our house unless my daddy got in the car and brought it home in big buckets. We used to have water but the big cement cistern in front of the kitchen got full of mosquitoes and we drank it and we all got typhoid fever. Daddy got the sickest and couldn’t work at the shoe factory for a long time.

After all the people left my father looked up from his glass of vodka and ordered us to bed.  Our beds have no sheets and the little metal buttons of the mattress dug into my hip when I turned in bed. I pulled the thin, tattered brown wool blanket over my shoulder and smiled at my new doll. She always smiled back. I was afraid to let anything stick out over the edge of the bed because of the rats that comes out at night to search for any crumbs we may have left behind. Just a week ago my father killed one with the coal shovel right next to my bed. He slammed it on the head to knock it out and then he used the edge to slice it in half. I screamed and then peeked though my fingers and watched the tail still twitching even though it was separated from its brain.

 

I,m sure those kind people all forgot the Christmas that they brought happiness to a rag tag family with too many dirty children, but I won,t forget and I raise my pen to give tribute to every kind heart that reaches out to other lives not only on Christmas but everyday.


Polishing the Knob.

When we decorated the christmas tree, I pulled out the silver jingle balls I had bought for each child when they were  born. They were black with tarnish. Somewhere in the back of my mind I thought I remembered that ketchup would get them clean.

Nope! That just got it covered with ketchup. Maybe it would have worked if it have High fructose corn syrup in it. Cause it didn’t. Causer i hate that stuff. Made my mother blind , so it scares me (diabetes, not me- her).

So here’s a method I just found. May not work any better than ketchup- we’ll see? I’ll let you know, unless you do it first and then I’ll let you know.

Try an ion exchange, a molecular reaction in which aluminum acts as a catalyst. All you have to do is line a pan with a sheet of aluminum foil, fill it with cold water, and add two teaspoons of salt. Drop your tarnished silverware into the solution, let it sit for two to three minutes, then rinse off and dry.


What makes an artist?

My baby daughter: Sonnet.

Many artist struggle with this elusive definition of an artist. But I think that it is just like having a baby. If you create a baby, everyone including yourself labels you as a mother or father. No questions asked. So if you create anything- a painting, music, writing you automatically are an artist. See? Simple.
If your baby is bad or good you are still a mother. If your art is bad or good you are still an artist.

 

 

 

 

 

Here’s what some others think:

From Stop Motion Magazine interview with japanese Artist  Fumiko Magari    

SMM: What makes an artist?

Magari: You need to know what you like and don’t like. Art comes from feelings, such as anger. I’m still looking. I want to make change. It’s a very serious question because no one has asked me so directly before.

Defining yourself as an artist
The 20th century view, first articulated by Marcel Duchamp, is that artists define themselves, with no other external forms of validation required. I believe this to be true. From the time I drew my first squibble with a broken yellow crayon and sat back on my hunches to admire my work I knew I was an artist. Why? Because I made art. Which to me means I took nothing and made something. That’s all. That simple.
Why do I make art? Because there is nothing else in the world that feels as good as creating something. Many people have tried to analyze its meaning. In the early 20th century Sigmund Freud pioneered the study of art in its psychoanalytic form by considering the artist as essentially a neurotic who deals with his psychic pressures and conflicts through his creative impulses. Maybe. Freud may be right about some artists and some art. But sometimes I just see something so beautiful, I have to capture it. So it becomes mine. It’s a way for me to push the beauty through my veins, to become a part of it. But that’s only sometimes.
According to Jung, art and other forms of creative endeavor could access the ”collective unconscious” and provide considerable insights on not just the process of creativity but also the cultural elements in the mind that are carried across generations. In Jungian psychology art as a psychological process would be an assimilation of the cultural experiences of the artist so it is accessible to an wider community.
Humans have been making images of humans as long as we have been able to use our hands. There is nothing else I want to paint, draw, sculpt except humans. Once in a while an animal but mostly humans. I am fascinated by the behavior of people and I like to express it in art. I think it helps me sort it out in my over cluttered brain. Maybe I am taking notes.
“What makes one an artist? My friend asks because she is timid about calling herself a “real” artist. I have always agreed with Duchamp. If you say you are an artist, you are. No validations or explanations needed. It’s because being an artist is a state of mind, not an action. It’s like if you say “I am hungry.” Art is a feeling. A compelling urge to create something from your observations and ideas. I have heard people say that you are a real artist if people buy your art. If sales defines you as an artist, where does that put old Vincent van Gogh, who only sold one or two paintings during his lifetime but is one of the most recognized dead artist in present day?
Do you really want to put that kind of power in the hands of mere mortals? Just because someone has enough money to buy your painting does NOT mean they have the wisdom and insight to knight you a “real “ artist. Leave that power in the hands of the proper owner- YOU! Only you know the burning desire you have to create art. Only you can hold that branding iron in the fire and sizzle your skin with the courageous act of branding yourself an artist. Go ahead! What are you afraid of? You can be a bad artist or a good artist. But be an artist!


Waterfalls and camping

The rain is making a sweet sound as it tap taps on the metal roof of my green truck. My husband softly breathes asleep in the drivers seat. No, he’s not driving!
It feels good to rest after climbing Watkins Glenn gorge trail. I came here on my honeymoon when I was just a sweet young thing of nineteen. And here I am, still in love. Four kids, three grand children later.
I’m glad it’s raining, it gives me time to think. Think about what I’m going to create next. I’m happy with my first doll but with what I’ve learned from her I hope to make the next one even better. There is something so magical about making a doll. Once the final touches are done, it is like she suddenly comes alive! Why is that? I never felt that way about a store bought doll. But a doll made by my own hands has the ability to be real. So as the rain potter pats I daydream about the next porcelain doll.

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Christmas Gift planning

Since I was a little girl I made everyone presents. I had to because I was very poor, but even if i wasn’t I still would have done the same.

I always start soon as halloween is over. Well, Halloween is over and it’s time to start coming up with ideas for gifts. The grandbabies are easy- they just want stuffies and dolls, as many as I can crank out.

Men are always difficult.