The Ether of Unkept Things

That place where the things

we should have let go of a very

long time ago – but didn’t – 

yeah, where those things go –

the ether of unkept things –

there is where I hope – or

hope never – to find, for these,

after all, are the things un-kept –

regrets – a whole sea of them – 

guilts and shames and memories

unbidden or bidden that stoop

the shoulders and bend the back

with the sheer weight of them

losses that were for the better

had I but known at the time

chances not taken, fears claimed

that should have been left behind

in unclaimed baggage long ago

there, in the ether of unkept things

do I imagine floating about – it is,

I think, the nature of unkept things

to float – angry letters written and

sent or not, their harm no more – 

friendships severed by time and

distance and change of circumstance –

tangible things – the baubles of 

existence – that necklace, this old

chair – all the things that seemed so

essential in their time – now floating

free form in the ether of the unkept

it’s not sad there – it is just –

unkept

Why Chickens Don’t Cross the Road

We all know why chickens do cross the road . . . to get to the other side . . . and in case we miss the point, there is actually a Wikipedia entry on the subject.

Yesterday as I was driving across Jack Mountain towards Monterey, I passed again a small flock of chickens on the right side of the road.  They are beautiful birds, these chickens.  Not your usual barnyard gathering by any means.

Yet there they were, free range on the side of the road, where I have come to expect to see them, not a caretaker nor coop in sight.

Who are these chickens?

To whom do they belong?

And how is it that they never, ever, ever, seem to cross the road?

While I was musing on such questions, I came upon a young deer who actually did cross the road.  But as with all the deer I’ve been seeing of late, she actually paused, seeming to look both ways before she stepped slowly from the side and walked, rather than leapt, across.

Has someone been gathering the animal population around here and teaching them about road safety?

A friend suggests that its evolution: all the ‘stupid’ deer have been killed, leaving only those smart enough to consider traffic when they encounter a road.

Perhaps.

But I rather fancy animal road safety courses taking place somewhere deep in the woods, beyond where human eyes can see – I wonder what the driver’s test is like?

A Trinity of Things

I love the Celtic prayer habit of three-ing everything.  There’s just something about things in threes that satisfies me like the evenness of twos and fours never can.

Thus do bacon and eggs never satisfy without a side of fried potatoes or at the least, a piece of toast.

And oh, how I wish socks were sold in threes, for I am inevitably set on losing one, leaving the other lone sister abandoned, unwanted, in the dark reserve of the drawer of abandoned things too good to throw away or hurled to the rag pile, this perfectly fine sock with no mate.

And if there be PBJ in my future, I’ll wait until I have a banana for that perfect trio of flavor.

And what are pencil and paper with no story?  Or a hammer and a nail with no hand?  Or a pair of pants with no legs?  Or spaghetti and meatballs with no scooping, sopping garlic bread?  Or peaches and cream without a spoon?  Or Fred and Ginger without the band?  Thunder and lightening without some rain?  Sound and fury without a thing signified?  Sheets and pillowcases without a bed?

A father and a son without a she-flying-the-waters-of-time, wisdom-bearing-carrying, life-breathing-love-giving oh-so-holy spirit?

Ah, yes, I do love the trinity of things.

The Wisdom of a Gran

Monday is for laundry.
           I don’t know why.
           It just is.

The grass is always greener til
           you’re the one who has to mow it.

Chances are when I’m glad to see you,
           you’re glad to see me.

Never be afraid to dance, sing, laugh when you’re by yourself.
           It’s good practice for when other people are watching.

If you want to navigate all the hells you’ll meet in life,
           it’s a good idea to hold on to heaven with all you’ve got.

Reuse tin foil and baggies and bread sacks –
           they’re useful and people will think you’re eccentric,
           which is not a bad reputation to have.

Feeding the world
           begins with knowing how to cook.

I will always love you
           no matter what
           count on it.

Art made by the hands of a child
           is always worth framing.

Guests, even uninvited ones, are a gift –
           treasure them.

Never be afraid to
           cry in front of others or laugh alone.

Pick the soundtrack of your life wisely –
           those voices will be in your head for a long time.

It's better to seek forgiveness than to seek permission
          is only good advice for picking someone else's flowers.

Life-like Living

Part 1

Life
like

what
is
life
like?

Life-
like?

How
can
a
thing
be
life-
like?

If
it
is
like
life
is
it
not
life
?

How
I
hug
the
margins
with
my
questions

***

Part 2

What has my life been like the last 10 years?  I ponder after asking a friend newly turned 40 about what her next 10 will be like in her imagining and she ruminates on the many changes . . . happenings . . . events . . . growths and losses . . . of the last 10 . . . 

And I ponder my own last 10 . . . from 2004 to now . . . trips to and from Scotland . . . friends made and shed . . . a new career – a calling . . . Iraq . . . no Iraq . . . striving to make peace with barely the language for it . . . a grandson . . . paradise and theater of the absurd – all wrapped in to one decade in one life on one tiny planet . . . 

Its significance eludes me . . . I am sure it is there but have not the facility to read the leaves of the tea and am left floundering for the meaning . . . the purpose . . . the design in a tapestry where I can only detect the faintest of threads . . . 

***

Part 3

What if I had been . . . 

President – no room for pacifism with that job description

A mother of many rather than few – would I have gotten better at it with more practice?

A dancer – but oh, the chocolate I would not have known

A Nigerian woman – would I have survived to womanhood or would I have been sold into invisibility long ago for daring to dream of reading a book?

Born a man – what secrets, what handshakes, what ways of striding the earth entitled would I know that I do not, cannot, now, with this feminine-encased carcass, know?

A waitress – would my legs hold me up at the ripe old age of almost 59?  

Born with no legs – would I hate you your easy grace?

A cow – would I have been lucky enough to have been born in India?

I suppose a life is what it is like.

The Rights of Bear Arms

the right to bear arms

has me thinking

of bears and their ‘arms’

[their legs?  are the front

ones arms or legs?

who keeps track of such

things?]

and why would I care much

about the walking, food

carrying appendages of bears?

do bears really require a 

constitutional right to

have arms?  isn’t that a bit . . . 

excessive? . . . silly? . . . 

odd?

or perhaps it means that

as a human, I have an

inalienable right to 

own me some bear arms

well – I know some folk

who have bear paws

and bear heads and

even bear skins,

but what would they do

with bear arms and why

do we need to protect

their privilege to 

collect them?

But maybe it really was

a typo and they – our

forward-thinking

fore-fathers really

were thinking about

bare

rather than

bear

arms

which makes a bit

more sense to me

as a gal kind of human

kind of being

given that there are places

like Saudi Arabia

and the Vatican

where somehow

my decovered

yea bare

arms

are cause for

great offense

and chafing

of hands

and gnashing

of teeth 

[I wonder why it is

that teeth are gnashed

and hands chafed

rather than the reverse]

for it seems that the

mere sight of my 

arms bereft of cover

reveals something

unseemly afoot 

in the ’verse 

but in my

puzzlement I am

sure that I am unsure

what it could possibly

be – so no – fore-fathers

surely did not think upon

the nakedness of my 

upper extremities

[even the name

is suggestive – extremity?

what then is so extreme

about my arms, I continue

to wonder in vain]

surely they meant guns

to protect and protect

and protect – for 'twould

make no sense to be

protecting naked arms

or polar, black, brown,

panda, grizzly and other

of the ursine kind in the use

and enjoyment of their

own arms, now would it?

I Could Have Been Born

I could have been born to be a Pacific-Island fisherman
waking each day to an ocean sunrise
the problem would be that I hate the taste of anything from water
are there fisherpeople who do not like fish?

I could have been born into the path of a 19th century house wife
you’ll forgive me, I hope if I tell you that’s my own personal version of hell
Medicine still making of child-birth an almost terminal illness
still not allowed so much – no vote, no voice, no property ownership
no, no, no
and I am so me that I would not be well-liked and probably wouldn’t
have to worry about that child-bearing thing, because no man in his right mind of the time
would even consider marrying what would surely be seen as a
harridan-in-the-making of the worst sort

I could have been born into unimaginable luxury
a Vanderbilt or the daughter of one of the many princes and kings inhabiting our planet
with more than my fair share at my fingertips
and if I had been, I wonder would I have been bothered by this largesse?
Would I have rebelled and run away from it all?
Or would I have succumbed to the temptation of entitlement
that this was mine because God or fate or some obscure sense of merit deemed it so?
Would I have even liked me then?

I could have been born a farmer, where life is simple if not easy
with each day plotted out before me, organized by the course of the stars
and the earth’s rhythmic movement from one season through another
the repetition being where I found my beauty
and the dirt dirtiness of the earth where I found my grounding

I could have been born unwanted
unsure of each moment, fearful
of every new thing

I could have been born a bird
freed to spread my wings
and fly the gulf-stream of things
soaring high above all save my
fellow birds – and planes

All things considered, I think I’ll take the me that is
rather than the me that could have been
although I do wonder what it might be like
to be that fish-hating fisherman

Snow Excuses

I want to go out

and play in the snow

make a snow angel

and take a picture

to share with you

but I have no

cell for a selfie

maybe I’ll just

stay inside

it’s cold out there

and even if I could

manage to capture

a pic with my 

vid cam and not

destroy my ’puter

in the process

you probably couldn’t

see it cos it’d be

white on white

and white on white

doesn’t show much

isn’t that why there’s

blue dye on the white

snow in the Olympics?

and I don’t have any

blue (or any other

color) dye so yeah,

I think I’ll stay inside,

’kay?

besides, there’s about

a billion snowflakes

in a cubic foot of 

snow and if I go 

outside, I’ll be a 

snow murderer,

won’t I?  as I crush

all those beautiful

flakes underfoot 

just so I can take

a picture to show you?

That doesn’t sound like

a very good reason to

murder innocent snow,

does it?

yeah, I’d better stay

inside – safer for

the snow that way

____________
Homework Hero - source for how many snowflakes in a cubic foot of snow

There Was a Boy Who Bumped His Head

For my grandson on the occasion of falling off his sled -- a little humor from your Gran

There was a boy

who bumped his head

it was no joy

when he rode his sled

for the boy

who bumped his head

He rolled in the snow

and he cried and he wailed

it was a hard blow

he felt he failed

the boy

who bumped his head

when he rode his sled

he got snow in his eyes

and snow in his snot

yes, you heard me – 

yes, snow in his snot

was what he got

so he cried and he cried

and he cried some more

so he did, this wee poor

boy . . . 

for it is no fun to have

snow in your snot

but snow in his snot

was what he got

when he rolled in the snow

from such a hard blow

the boy who bumped his head

when he rode his sled

when all of a sudden

his snot got froze

right there on his face,

right there on his nose

so crunchy and crumbly it was

that he made a snot snowball

it caused quite a buzz

turns out it can be fun

to have snow in your snot

when snow in your snot

is what you’ve got

when you roll in the snow

from such a hard blow

from bumping your head

when riding your sled

that you just have to 

laugh

the end

Wholly Holey Holy

It’s time and well past time to retire my favorite blue jeans, wholly holey holy as they are.  It’s not easy, this letting go, silly as it sounds, of some denim bits that have shrugged themselves around me as I stride though these moments of a life.

Today I will laugh with the ladies at the annual Christmas lunch, with a bittersweet remembering of Gloria, now gone from us, laughing herself silly over her bragging rights to having her  minister visit wearing her wholly holey holy jeans.

When I retire these jeans to the trash bin, I’ll recall other jeans, similar in texture, my mother tried to sneak and throw away when I was a teen, only to have me retrieve them and show up gleefully wearing them the next day to her long-suffering sighs.

Like a lot of things in life, it takes time to get the perfect jeans – the ones that just collapse onto your body, softened by our time together, worn in just the right ways for comfort, getting to the place where we just fit together.

Like love, being past their sell-by date is of no matter.

Like laughter, they invite unbidden a certain joy merely by their presence.

Is it silly for a grown woman to mourn the passing of an article of clothing?  Most likely.

But if you’ve ever had your own wholly holey holy jeans, you’ll understand.

Silly Bird

Sitting in the gathering space of the retreat center in the daylight hours, we marvel at the incessant tapping.

Surrounded by windows on all sides, it’s a bit disconcerting, until Christina deduces the cause: a small mockingbird is trying to get in.

Why he would want to get in remains a mystery.

One does not usually credit birds with strategic capabilities navigating ingress and egress.  Nor do we often think of birds choosing where they want to be based on color and beauty.

But this bird goes from window to window to door to window, proceeding around the circle of the windows and doors, methodically seeking entre, always denied yet undeterred.

This morning, we all sit enjoying a leisurely breakfast, when we’re interrupted by a light tapping.

He’s back.

He’s like the postal service, this guy – unstoppable by small things like night and double-paned glass, he continues his tapping, confident that he will find the way in.

He is, after all, determined.

Silly bird.

The Alarm Clock Ballet

In this second career of ministry in a rural setting, most days I no longer have to live by the alarm sounding time to get up . . . most days I just get up when I wake up – a lovely gift of living to the rhythms of my body and the world around me – most days.

But some days an alarm is required – like today.

And can I just say how demonic I think the inventor of the snooze button is?  Who came up with that nefarious idea that we can somehow buy ourselves just a little more sleep by the hit of a button?  Really, who?  You can tell us.  We won’t hurt you – well, maybe only a little.

But I digress.

I put my alarm just out of reach so that I actually have to get out of bed to turn it off.  Otherwise me and snoozie just sleep on into the day 5 minutes or so at a time.

Even that doesn’t work for this deep sleeper, though, as I’m fully capable of jumping out of bed, hitting snooze and going right back into the warmth of the covers for those precious 5 more minutes.

Usually the maneuver looks like a fish jumping from the water and plunging back in again with that slight hesitation at the top of the arc.

But some days, waking happy if sleepy, I do the alarm clock ballet:

Jump from bed

Land on one tip toe

Straighten knee

Hit snooze with one delicate pointed finger

Pirouette

Fall gracefully

Repeat

It’s my own personal alarm clock ballet, this move, proving to myself that I can still dance, even if it’s in the morning when no one else can see, even if the grace of the move lies only in my imagining, and yes, it is good and smiling, I plunge back into my dreams.

An EasyBake Ovenless Life

You know you’ve had a privileged childhood when you’re biggest beef with your parents is that you never

got that EasyBake Oven you drooled over as a girl.

That’s right – an EasyBake Oven.

Even now when I see the modern equivalent, I find I am jealous, feeling somehow bereft, that I never had the chance as a girl child to cook real, albeit tiny, cakes to the heat of a light bulb.

How does that work, anyway?

And the really silly thing about this (well, several silly things, actually)?

1. I learned to cook from the women of my family on real stoves – way better any day than EasyBake.

2. If I really, really, really want an EasyBake Oven, I could certainly get one for myself now (of course, that wouldn’t be the same, but still).

3. The cakes were crap.  We all know it.  No matter how cool the pictures were on television, when all was said and done, what you were left with was really not much.

4. None of my friends (that I can remember) ever had an EasyBake Oven.  So wherever the source of my childhood obsession resides, it isn’t in jealousy.  What is it?  I truly don’t know.  The fact is, I just hate to admit that 50+ years later, I can still be swayed into a morass of emotions just by seeing a picture of, of all things, an EasyBake Oven (sigh).  And I hate even more the very real possibility that it’s as simple as the power of advertising having planted this ridiculous desire in my heart.

What is an EasyBake Ovenless girl to do?

_________________
NOTE:  After another post on our church's FB page about our upcoming Sunday's Chocolate Communion service, I went to the FB page of Baraka Presbyterian Church (in Bethlehem) because they had 'liked' the Chocolate Communion post.  And what did I see?  In far away Bethlehem, where there is so much suffering, violence and trauma, the children in the nursery at the church there enjoy -- yes -- their very own EasyBake (well, maybe not the same brand) Oven.  What a blessing!  Thank you, Lord, that these children have space in which to laugh and play, live and love, worship and praise.  Amen.

A Vacation of Hiatuses: 10 Learnings from Being Away

hi·a·tus  [hahy-ey-tuhs]  noun, plural hi·a·tus·es, hi·a·tus:  a break or interruption in the continuity of a work, series, action, etc. Dictionary.com

va·ca·tion  [vey-key-shuhn, vuh-]  noun:  a period of suspension of work, study, or other activity, usually used for rest, recreation, or travel; recess or holiday.

Gone for a week on vacation with son and grandson in tow, for the first time in a long time, the computer stayed off (well, all but once and should have stayed off then) . . . links in the ether were suspended . . . fingers did no key tapping . . . FB was not checked . . . blog was not posted . . . and all in all, it was good and very good.

I was having a vacation of hiatuses.  And boy, did I need them.

Learnings from this vacation, this series of breaking interruptions in my life continuity while in Chicago I share . . .

1. Even when you catch a cold, vacation is good.

2. Sons and grandsons are great travel buddies.

3. Always have a note pad handy to write down those unforgettables . . . like Rowen proclaiming that friend Anita was indeed the best resource for information, because, you see, “she’s an artist and artists know everything!”

4. Skipping is the best way of travel by foot – you get there quicker and it’s way more fun along the way.  So skipping was Rowen that his new nickname on this trip (dubbed by his father) was Skippy Longstocking.

5. Conversation in the hot late hours of the night with friends new and old around the kitchen table bring wisdom as well as mirth, ponderings and silliness in no particular order – and they are all their own blessing to be carried back into ordinary time.

6. A good humility check – everyone does fine without you while you’re gone.  Doesn’t mean you’re not missed, just that you’re not the center of anyone’s universe – which is how it should be, eh?

7. The best use of things is not always their intended use.  Sometimes a portable lap desk makes a better back cushion than it ever did a desk.

8. Schedules are put into the ridiculous light they deserve as a boy child goes willingly into sleep each night when his eyes can no longer sustain their open-lid status, the day having finally, at the last, overcome him.  Why do we not always simply go to sleep when we are tired?

9. Friends are treasures.

10. Birds are not benign.  Threatened, like all other of God’s critters, they will fight back – even on a mini-golf course, even when you mean them no harm.

Home again, tired, still fighting the cold, happy and warm, wrapped in love and good memories.

Pie Are Round

So I’m watching a series on Hulu just for relaxation, when one of the characters removes what she calls a

Here's a beauty found at Cocina Para Emancipados

quiche from the oven . . . and it’s a rectangle.  And unbidden, my mind thinks, “that’s not a quiche – it’s a rectangle.  A quiche has to be a circle.  It’s a pie, dammit!  And pie are not square (or rectangular), pie are round.”

It’s a bit of silliness (well, okay, a whole lot of silliness), I know, but I can’t shake this feeling that when quiche are not round, there’s something wrong at work in the universe.

If I had more energy, I would research why pies are round and why quiches in particular are.  I would learn the history of the quiche.  I would know its variations of wonderfulness.  And I might even take the time and learn how to make my quiche square, if not rectangular (there must be some standards, after all!).

But it is way too early in the morning to be spending so much time online investigating just to know the difference, the implications, of the square, rectangle and circle-shaped quiche.

I think I’ll go back to bed.

_______
Because I am that geekie, I just did a quick scan of google images of quiches and although I didn't look at them all, I only found 5 non-circular shaped dishes out of roughly 1,000 images of the glorious quiche - and I suspect that those 5 may not be quiches at all, but rather a strada or some other egg dish.  Just sayin.

It's Been Too Long

It’s been too long
since I played
in the mud
danced in the rain
or on the ballroom
floor for that matter

It’s been too long
since I’ve been to
a slumber party
jumped on the bed
giggled my way
through the night

It’s been too long
since I woke up
laughing, giddy
with the promise
of a new day

It’s been too long
since I hugged
a tree and felt
it hugging me

I think I hear the
rain – time to get
out my dancing shoes

Sapcicle Hunting

“I want to tell you what I saw yesterday,” said Laura* last night.  “You know where all the trees are down around Ramsey’s Draft?”

“Yes.”

“Well, there were these amazing . . . well, I always called them sapcicles.”  

“Sapcicles?”

“Yeah – when the sap’s running in the maples and it gets cold again and where a branch has broken, little sap icicles form.  Sapcicles.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah.  They were amazing.  There were so many.  It was beautiful.  I wish I’d had my camera with me.  But I wanted to tell you that when we used to live in the manse, we’d fight over who got the sapcicles.  They’re soooo good!”

“I can’t believe I’ve never even noticed.”  (Sigh)

“Well, if it gets cold again tomorrow, you should look for them.”

So I did.  I went sapcicle hunting today.  No luck.  Will try again later.  Still can’t believe I’ve never noticed, never reached out and tried a sapcicle.  Can’t wait for my first taste of spring.

UPDATE 2.23.13: No sapcicile sightings as yet.  Still looking.


____________
Shout out to friend Laura LaPrade for introducing me to sapcicles.

Snow Man Melting

I know he is a snow man because he’s got no curls – dead giveaway in the world of children to know a girl when you see one.

I ponder him across the street throughout the day yesterday as he gets smaller and smaller and wonder
          [is there science for this?  Surely.]
at his shrinking in the midst of such snow – for the snow kept coming all day yesterday – .

What makes him small?  Why does he shrink?  He isn’t melting – at least I don’t think so.

The morning, as usual, brings clarity – of a sort.  I see the snow man, shorter than yesterday in contrast to his pre-snow self – for the new fall added some inches around him and he became shorter only by being buried in the stuff of his existence, seeming to disappear from my eyes – with an amused snort, I return inside, mystery solved and all’s right with my world.

Fun with Words

From The Writers' Almanac for Monday, January 27 (shout out to Laurie McKnight for sharing)

It was on this day in 1754 that the word "serendipity" was first coined. It's defined by Merriam-Webster as "the faculty or phenomenon of finding valuable or agreeable things not sought for." It was recently listed by a U.K. translation company as one of the English language's 10 most difficult words to translate. Other words to make their list include plenipotentiary, gobbledegook, poppycock, whimsy, spam, and kitsch.

Given that these are so hard to translate, I thought I’d offer up some (very silly) examples.  Here goes, with all due apologies to Merriam, Webster, et al.:

1. Serendipity.  A very cool coincidence.  An event whose happening is somewhere between fate and chance.  Something that happens to you that’s good and always happens when you’re looking the other way, like when mothers tell their daughters that they’ll find the man of their dreams when they stop looking for him.  Every romantic movie features the element of serendipity: the pair meets (or meets again) in the strangest of ways, totally unexpected (to them).  Sleepless in Seattle doesn’t count because they were looking for each other.  The number one rule of serendipity is that you can’t look for it.  My nomination for most serendipitous movie of all time: Forrest Gump.  

2. Plenipotentiary.  I can pronounce it (I think), and know it has something to do with governing, but without resort to the web, have nothing much to say.  I googled the word, learned (or relearned) that it means one invested with full power – one who can come to the negotiating table with the power to speak on behalf of the principal.  It took two pages to even find a reference to actual usage and wouldn’t you know – it’s from the United Nations, whose ITU (International Telecommunication Union) has a Plenipotentiary every so often.  Presumably this is a meeting of representatives who have the authority to make decisions on their nations’ collective behalf.  Of course, I’m only guessing, never having been.  The next one, should you wish to join in, will be in 2014 in Busan, South Korea’s second largest city.

3.   Gobbledegook (which I always thought was spelled gobblygook - shows how much I know).  A hodge-podge.  A mish-mash.  Now you see the problem of trying to define something hard to define: all its synonyms are equally obscure.

4. Poppycock.  A nice way of saying ‘bull shit’.  Synonyms: nonsense; not true; wrong; insupportable; bull shit.

5. Whimsy.  Silliness that’s sort of romantic or cute.  A teenage girl who dresses like she’s 4 is whimsical.  A 60-year-old woman who does is creepy.  One is cute; the other is wrong.  The cute one is an example of whimsy.

6. Spam.  I’m guessing this refers not to the internet phenomena of being hit with a snow-ball of an e-mail or other mass event, but rather to the meat-like product of same name.  No wonder it cannot be explained – who would do that to meat?  So to my friends around the world, the best I can explain spam is this: take every part of a land animal you find most disgusting, throw them together, grind them into mush, squeeze it all together in a small container until it forms a solid and call it ‘spam’.  We don’t understand it either.  And I have yet to meet anyone who admits to eating it, although I have heard rumors of fried Spam and it does continue to appear on grocery shelves, so unless those cans on the shelf are post-WWII relics, some of you are lying to me.

7. Kitsch.  Shout out to law-school friend Anna Norton, who first introduced me to the concept of kitsch and even loaned me a book dedicated to examples.  However you define kitsch (tackiness, appropriating important cultural icons for the basest of pop culture purposes), giving the Mona Lisa a big toothy grin is definitely the best example I know.  And given the season, pretty much anything sold for Valentine’s Day is kitsch.

Painting by the Numbers

I read somewhere – I think it was Annie Dillard – about the earth looking like a paint-by-numbers canvas and thought about the one time I got one of those sets as a child.  Disaster.  I never was much of a colorer – the lines absolutely defeated me and this was back in the day when staying in the lines mattered.  Shoot, I wanted to stay within those lines.  I just couldn’t.  The perfection of hand and eye moving together simply defeated me.  Did then, does now.  So you can imagine the horror of my efforts to add to the color-line mix a sequence of numbers coordinated to color that had to be the same every time – with just one deviation causing utter failure as the lovely landscape or Raggedy Ann turned into a horror-movie version of itself.  There are no do-overs when it comes to painting by the numbers.  No margin for error.  The expectation of that pre-set ‘you-too-can-be-an-artist’ lie weighed heavy on me before I even began.  Who can meet that kind of demand from a piece of paper?  I couldn’t.  I didn’t.  And I can’t.

So while I absolutely adore the writing of Annie Dillard, I have to say she took me to a far different place than I’m sure she intended with that passing reference to farmland laid out so neat and precise that it minded her of painting by the numbers.

Maybe painting outside the lines is something to be celebrated; but I have to tell you that coloring like a five-year-old when you’re 57 isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.