Sketchbook Writings

~ From my sketchbook writings, May 17th 2013 ~

Here is what I love about the sea, the Sound, the great swirl of salt and heaving life.  Here is the outpouring, unlocking, loosening of the throat, the bone striping wind, the olfactory discord of decay and bloom, the bewitching mortality of it all.

I stand at the edge.

I can love her tender, I can rage tempestuous, I can gather her bits of stone and shell, I can throw them back with unnecessary force.  She is not gentle, she is not kind.  Do not be fooled by fairy tales and sweet song.  But she is whole.  Birth and life and death incarnat.

* * *

Whenever I visit these so-called grey beaches of the northern pacific, all I see is color.  The subtle layering of mountain ranges shrouded in a watery reflection of sky and sea, the luminosity of big leaf maples in juvenile foliage - a glow that only comes with the mist.  The warm hues of slick driftwood, the iridescent flash of crows and the hot punch of red-winged blackbirds.  And then of course, the stones.
If you but call out a color, say, Mustard! then suddenly they appear as speckled pockets of glowing chroma.  Coral! and the beach comes alive with vermillion hues.  Teal! and my hand becomes greedy, my thighs gritty with sand as I wipe down stone after stone.
I am the magpie.
I am the wandering gypsy with pockets full of treasure.
Whisper me a salty tale and I'll share with you my trove.
* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my sketchbook writings, December 10th ~

The fog makes times stand still.  There is no back, no forward, there is hardly even up or down.  I no longer remember when I woke or when I should bed.  There is only now and the ticking of dew rolling down curls.
Three bald eagles in two days.  This land has swallowed me in exchange for raptors.  I puff along like a bright red steam engine, collecting speed, collecting shapes, lines, curves, textures, like a greedy architect.  I'll use some later, and what ever else is left rattling in my mind and [too shallow] pockets will be tipped out of those checkered panes and given to the ravens.  They'll take it all.  They always do.
Up on the ridge the trees, not expecting company through the long winter, have slipped out of their summer finery and grown shaggy green coats.  We're all a little rough around the edges but this is how I know we're old friends.  There is no need for pretense here, just a swinging gait, green scent of rot, and mud caked on boots.
* * *

I spent yesterday on Rattlesnake Ridge.  Days like that give me few words, halting descriptions, like trying to explain the scent of freshly baked bread to a newborn.  So I use my hands to tell the story.  And as ever, they are far more eloquent than my tongue.

 

Land Tribute: A Mountain Narrative Necklace
(sterling silver and a small pebble plucked from the Eel River in Northern California)
* * *
Stay warm friends; I'm off to pick up a hot bowl of soup and run to the post; calendars are fluttering to homes across the globe and I can not thank you enough!

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, October 8th 2012 ~

It began like any other weekday morning.

7:15.  Cold black nose on my chin.  Sunlight in harsh vertical lines across the mirror.

And somewhere between slipping on dirty jeans and grinding coffee beans, that light turned sour.

Perhaps sour is too easy of a word.  Perhaps crushing existential crisis is more apt.

Shaking fingertips.  The taste of bile.

So naturally I did the dishes left over from last night.  Recklessly clanged vintage plates.  Angrily chopped a pear.  Beat the hell out of a pomegranate.

It's a lovely misguided logic, this belief that if the body spins in busyness, the mind will have no time to wander dark hallways.

So I poured almonds into a dry pan on medium heat.  Picked up dog food bowls.  Tidied the floor.

From outside BC called in a hash whisper.

Out front, in the tallest cedar, the one with ruddy bark that leaves bits of itself all over the cars, there was a dash.

A squawk.  A clammer of claws on limbs and feathers in evergreens.

Not more than twelve feet up, a young peregrine craned her neck back and forth looking for the squirrel she had cornered.  What ensued was a desperate dance for life, the squirrel spinning around the trunk, freezing under thick branches.  The peregrine plunging perilously through foliage, swinging tight to the cedar with a pivot off a single clawed foot.  They spun, danced, screeched, froze, crept, leapt up and down that tree for who knows how long.  Twice she sailed out close enough for me to brush a wingtip or feel that banded tail.  

I whispered to BC, 

"There are almonds burning on the stove,"

but I didn't move.

I was holding my breath for her, in her awkward juvenile attempts.  I wanted her strong, I wanted her well fed, but more than anything I wanted her to come back and visit me in this odd urban oasis of mine. 

* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, June 14th 2012 ~

[after a long night of insomnia which transformed into the gift of a pre-dawn beach walk]

It's colder than I expected, a world of gray and sound and clear orbs of jelly washed up on the beach.  I can not walk a straight line here; the damp imprints I carelessly leave behind weave and warp in a pattern of crazy.
I pick up another feather, this one tinier than the last, and understand something instinctual about humanity's need to adore themselves.
I need to wear feathers.
I need communion.
I need to imbibe the feeling of flight, feel the tug of wind across my scalp and the yearning of gravity toward my airborne hips.
I need the solitude of fog to wash through my chest, spitting out those ten thousand grains of sand I managed to pick up along the way.
I need the fire of dawn to burn off these lies I forgot to disbelieve, to leave a hot core of truth in its wake.
And then I realize:
this is no longer about the walk.

* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my sketchbook writings, Thursday April 5th, 2012 ~

I saw the first amethyst blooms of the lupines today.  I don't know why that flower holds such a potency in my heart.  Why it makes me feel hoary and timeworn, even as they spring up from the sandy earth in a flush of youth.
This brings me to the ancestors.  My own lineage is pockmarked with great holes of unknowing which leaves me free to wonder:
Have my people always needed water, great, dark rushing bodies and the physical sensation of tides?  Were they struck dumb, hearts cracked open at the permeating energy of ancient redwoods?  Did they always wear feathers in their hair, were they always the familiars of the red hawks?  Did they believe the white tailed deer understood them, and feel a sympathetic trembling in their tendons?  Did they scan the undergrowth for ferns before staking camp, did they run fingers along spore spines?  Did they whisper wishes for raven calls at sunrise and gray foxes in the night?  Did they leave a lock of hair for the cedar, offer the best blackberry to the birds, gift song to the sweet peas, and rock on their heels, breathing thanks for stone treasures, wood treasures, bone treasures?
I guess what I'm truly asking is this:
Did they realize, each Spring, just how much breath they held waiting for the lupines to bloom?

* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my sketchbook writings and images, Monday March 12th ~

This is a true story about today:

It's been a day.  Nothing noteworthy, nothing outstanding, nothing traumatic other than the aftershocks of a dream which remains unremembered but deeply felt all the same.  I've been off.  My skin crawling with anxiety, breath sticky in my lungs.  

Outside the wind howled like the apocalypse; rain directly parallel to the river, bamboo brushing the ground in prostrate repentance, birch grunting like sea sick women.

And me.  I stood outside in the mud, shivering in nothing but an old white tank and bare feet, willing the weather to make me feel alive.

I looked up.  "Is this all there is?"

I watched leaves fly sideways.  "Show me there's more."

Curls dripped into my eyes and rain slapped my neck.  "Give me something.  Let me know."

And then, honest truth on my life, in that gale force that would send the stoutest beast cowering, in the flood that threatened the very integrity of the earth, a hummingbird flew to me.  Winter colors of muted olive and seaweed.  Flying from the north, she flew to me, lighted on the twisted cherry, paused for only half a second and was gone.

And I laughed at this mother of ours, the one who keeps our hearts whole and our creatures fed.  Because even in my small tantrum, I was heard.

Sketchbook Writings

~ From My Sketchbook Writings, Tuesday January 10th ~

It begins like this:
An uneventful sunset eases into busy hands and a quiet mind.  It progresses like any dream of flying; walking turns to running turns to leaping turns to earth rotating slowly below one's soles.  And somewhere in there, the mind gives way to wild thoughts.  The dangerous thoughts that in one's waking moments are too big, too grandiose, too ludicrous to allow among the elderly at heart.  The children, well, they've always been unafraid.  So we tie wings to their shoes and tell them to fly and sure enough,
they step onto thin air.
All the while our hands keep moving while the mind leans back and sighs and says yes.  That will do.

* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, Thursday September 15th ~

It feels like fall.  Like damp soil and goosebumps on forearms and gray cashmere cardigans.
The leaves are falling.  Falling fat and flaxen but if I squint I can pretent they are snow.
I can not break this stare; is it possible to be hypnotized by a season?  To fall utterly and completely under the control of a force as distance and permeating as the orbital path of the earth?
Perhaps when I wake the shiver of bamboo will leave the taste of late season peaches on my tongue.  No.  My senses are confused.  They've been swirled and whipped up through the vortex of birch leaves and tiny gnats, spinning for one last golden second in the remains of summer.
* * *

Sketchbook Writings

First and very foremost, let me tell you this:

As of July 9th, I am an Aunt, for the very first time.

Gemma Grace Gibson is now part of my life and flesh and blood.

I already love her.

And I have never wanted to buy baby clothes so badly in my whole life.

* * * * *

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, Tuesday July 12th -

The world seems bursting with life, fresh eyed and tender footed, and in far greater profusion than last year.  Last summer all my preparations, my energy, my preoccupations were focused on the swift approaching winter of my heart.  The winter of my body, the time when death in small doses would claim bits of my flesh.  I could not see the glory of the sun for my fear of the snow.  And while I harvested summer's bounty, put up stores and made note of blooms, my thoughts were filled with winter and I shivered in the light.

But this season, this time around, the stakes have changed.  New life surrounds me.  

Just yesterday I sat in focused stillness watching a starling teach her young to forage.  In the suburban expanse of the front lawn, she was iridescently black, sleek, and hopped on two stiff legs through the unmown dandelions.  Her single remaining offspring, a fluffy mushroom colored thing, squawked incessantly.  His gapping pink tongue would be a dead giveaway in dry grasses or squatting with the awkwardness of youth in the cedars, but here in the bounty of green fescue he was ready for every morsel she dropped into his waiting mouth.  She would pop, pop, he was squeak, she would produce a small mystery the color of cherries, he would flap messily to her side and she would neatly place the treasure right down his gullet.  This carried on as long as I could stay still.  I lost count of the minutes in my adoration and childlike amusement.  As an outsider, it seemed a silly teenage ploy for freebies, but deeper down I knew he was learning to survive.  But aren't we all?  Silly things, learning to survive?

Then last week, standing in the lingering heat of the valley as crickets sang, I watched the deer.  A leggy doe, large-eared as any I've seen ambled just on the far side of fence.  Her fawn, spotted brightly, spooked at leaves drifting down from the oaks, at fat and lazy bumblebees, at the sound of tires on asphalt from the road down the hill.  I watched them with purposeful intent, trying to etch their forms in my mind, the tilt of an ear, the light in an eye in order to later record them.  They picked along through the field, the doe leading the fawn towards the greenest shoots hidden alongside embankments and circling the trunks of trees.  I tried to follow silently, but placed a heel right into a crackling mound of dry leaves.  The fawn startled and tucked but the doe snapped her gaze right into mine.  She raised her neck to full height without breaking her focus and pulled in long, slow breaths, testing the wind and my very human scent.  Halting, the fawn followed suit, before they both turned tail and disappeared into the brush.
* * * * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, Sunday May 1st through Tuesday May 3rd 2011 ~

(Along the Northern California Coast, in God's own best Spring weather, with naught more than a sketchbook, a pair of cowboy boots and kindred soul to share it with)

* * *
Coffee suits me well this morning.  Thanksgiving blend indeed!  The sky is an expanse of brilliance, causing my eyes to squint and water as I outline bits of tile and glass in my sketchbook.  The people in this town feel easy, and I wonder how far reaching the cadence of their footsteps carries. When I leave, how long with I carry their slow swagger?
* * *

* * *

For now I sit with bare feet, cold on the railing, watching waterfowl of every size floating and soaking toes in the estuary.  In the dunes below a cat hides in marsh grass, all controlled breath and snakelike tail.  He triggers a zephyr than sends my thoughts clutching at a dream; he must have been there last night, whispering feline fantasies about goslings and ancient wooden stairwells.  A single osprey hushes the noisy chatter below.  We nod, exchanging respects. The sun of the afternoon, evidenced by my scorched neck, has been masked by a marine layer.  My toes are cast cold and blue in this light.  I should stop eating pretzels.  I should pop in the shower.  I'm giving up should from my vocabulary.

* * *

* * *
I'm drunk on the luxury of the sky.  This little trip, passing so quickly, is best described by light: the flickering hot glow under the canopy of redwoods, the quiet cashmere cape while consuming eggs and toast, the bright afternoon which reduces everything to raw shape and form, the ethereal gleam of bluffs at sunset while the quail cooed and the rabbits scattered.  These are colors for which there are no names, only fleeting memory and stuttering tongues.
* * *

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, Sunday March 20th 2011 ~

(At the summit of the Trinidad Head Trail)

(In the lightest rain the heavens could drop)

Up here the air is thick.  Rich.  Each mouthful a culinary experience.  Up here the wind has tidied her kitchen, taming the brush into an orderly existence, perfectly uniform curves and closely shorn foliage.

I check in on my senses one by one, lest I'm overwhelmed with all this peak has to offer.  When I open my mouth I can taste the sea.  I detect a hint of sweetness from the sugared blooms, each pink saucer smaller than my fingernail, a tang that causes my jaw to clench from the years of detritus below my feet, a chalkiness from limestone grinding away, and finally a bright note that can only be attributed to the ten thousand trilliums raising their holy faces to the wind.  My undeniably human odor is mixed in there too; I wonder if the sparrows sense me on the air, breath in all my idiosyncrasies, if my scent compliments the rich soup of this coastal air.

Sketchbook Writings

~ From my Sketchbook Writings, Thursday January 20th 2011 ~

The Moon, like a pied piper, stole my heart away this morning, dancing and luring it through cerulean skies.  I stood on the stoop and shivered in the blue light, stamping my feet and blowing great clouds of heat through my lips.  There was no time for photoshoots, no time to arrange myself to watch the show, for directly east, the Sun was charging over mountaintops in a shameless flood of luminosity.  He chased La Luna like a jilted lover, warming her skies with toasted apricot hues, warming my cheeks to a rosy glow, warming the breath of the crows to puffs of pure white, like tiny steam engines in the grass.

She, however, only laughed and slipped westward over the sea.  Westward singing my heart over the waves.  Westward till only the frigate birds could spin in her reflected light.

I tried to drink it all in, tried to record those subtle shifts of color with absolute precision, tried to imprint my mind with the way the atmosphere vibrated when their lights clashed.  But like all moments of glory when the heavens open and mere mortals peek inside, I found myself dumbstruck with beauty.  Drunk and heady, stumbling forward with wide eyes.  I opened my mouth but only single notes and the scent of paperwhites came out.  

Now, I look at my hands and recall, ever so faintly, when the sky was the color of my fingertips.

Sketchbook Writings

Somedays I just chat in my sketchbook, keeping a record of sorts.  Today was one of those kind of days.

- From my sketchbook writings, December 16th, 2010 -

Today the sea offered up a veritable smorgasbord of color and texture, along with a fine grit of salt to line my lips.  I felt like the month of April was vacationing on the coastline, taking a break from anywhere that utters the words "deep freeze," so I gladly traded out my jacket for a pashmina, stripped off my gloves, rolled up my sleeves and bade it please, please warm my skinny forearms.  The sea stone cache was so grand that two exceptional things happened: 1) A trip to the car was required, as I was dragging a fully laden bag, only to empty it to the floorboards and walk directly back to the shoreline for more. 2) The second bag, filled to bursting, gave up on this life and loosed itself from the shoulder strap in a huge tumble of noise and chaos.  How great is a haul that breaks the back (or strap) of the bag that carried it?  I take this as a sign of overwhelming bounty, absolutely topped off with fresh material.  I want to lodge my soul firmly in this place, to line my thoughts with a tapestry woven from seaweed and sword ferns.

***

I adore this tiny cafe, in this tiny town, nearly airplane sized but with a heart of pure gold.  As I sit scratching away in this book of mine, the bubbly barista in the enviable stockings pronounces to a [traveling] patron that they have no paper togo cups, reason being that he has now stepped into the land of tree-huggers and would he like to purchase a mason jar for his coffee.  I'm quite content in this land, drinking my tea from a well-used hunk of ceramic, nibbling on a homemade lemon bar, my mood matching the sunshine splashed up the walls.  I sip more maté and contemplate taking home a raw, vegan cinnamon roll made by someone up the lane named Joe.  I just feel good.  Which is the most simplistic set of words to describe the state of my heart, the color of the light pouring from my sternum, the downy wings I'm pretty sure are sprouting from my spine.  

**********

Home.

I'm thinking about Dwelling.  

I have new work to show you.

I have a new piece almost ready to reveal.

Did I mention I'm painting it for you?

In celebration, in a giveaway

because there is SO much in my life worth celebrating.

(yep. More on that tomorrow after my final post-chemo appointments)

Oh yeah, this funky beat is what I'm sliding my brushes to today. 

"Wont wont wont ba da ta da"

(this is exactly the sound coming out of my mouth)

(also I shake my shoulders with some SOUL when I chair dance)

mmmmmuah!

- Umber