Earlier in the week I went to hear Catherine Ryan Hyde talk about her book, Pay It Forward. (You probably saw or remember the movie, with Kevin Spacey and Helen Hunt.)
Ryan Hyde came up with the idea for the book after two men helped put out a fire in her car's engine block. In shock,she just sat in the vehicle, watching the smoke pour in from under the dashboard, scared to get out of the car in the middle of the night in LA's Echo Park neighborhood.
Ryan Hyde recounted how she saw the men approach her vehicle, one carrying a blanket. She had every expectation that she would be hurt by these two strangers. What unfolded would change the direction of her entire life. The men used the blanket to put out the fire, and had already called the fire department. They helped. In the resulting confusion, of fire trucks, tow trucks, and police reports, the two men left without giving Hyde a chance to thank them for saving her life.
The need for closure eventually led to the idea for the Pay It Forward campaign - instead of "repaying" a good turn, you can pay it forward to someone who needs your help. Ryan says that when you have received something - whether it is a great or small effort on the part of the giver - it will then be much easier for you to give something to someone else.
In the lecture, the audience also talked about how the principle works in the negative. The media often recounts how a child raised by an abuser will grow up to abuse others. For me, this example (though I know it can be true) is extreme. What troubles me more is the role modeling that happens in the "middle" space. The everyday acts of emotional violence that people act out on one another that, by society's standards, are just a "normal" part of life.
Things children are supposed to learn to cope with - emotional blackmail, teasing at home or at school, parents who withdraw their "love" if you don't do the right thing or parents who cling to their children so they don't have to be alone. Parents who project their addictions or disappointments onto their kids, teachers and caregivers who look the other way. Adults who feel compelled to point out their friends' weak spots in front of everyone, who can't seem to forget things that are better left in the past. Even those who mean well get easily overwhelmed by the need in the world and put up the blinders to the needs of others.
By coincidence, I have been reading a very good book by Harville Hendrix called Keeping the Love You Find. It's a very thoughtful book about how the love you experienced in childhood influences the way you give and receive love as an adult.
You see, one of the things I had been noticing about myself - it will probably seem funny to you - is that whenever I do yard work, I become extremely anxious. For the first three years of country life, I wouldn't work outside at all. Finally, I decided to help out but only because I "needed the exercise", but I still second guess my decisions about where to put the leaf piles or whether or not I should really pick up the dead sticks myself or wait for Mike.
I enjoy the work if I am with Mike but if I'm alone, there is this whole worried conversation going on in my head about whether or not I'm raking "properly." I realized one day that I am WAITING FOR MY FATHER TO COME OUT AND YELL AT ME as he often did when I was a kid. Obviously, this was not the "normal" yelling of a "normal" parent.
Maybe yard work seems small, but Hendrix argues that certain consistent behaviors at certain times in a child's life can dramatically alter kids' perceptions about their self-worth. Inconsistency can disturb a child's emotional development event more. Catherine Ryan Hyde said something like this in her talk. The way we perceive ourselves and the power we have in the world is "talked into us, yelled into us, you learn quickly what not to say." And it informs the rest of your life.
Thought for today: How we treat each other matters. How we treat each other in front of kids matters. How we treat kids matters the most.
A great lunch with my Twitter friends (and a little after lunch shopping) and the world seems like a friendlier place. Laughing is everything, isn't it?
I've been in a period of epic boredom since the beginning of 2008. Not the kind of boredom that people talk about when they have nothing to do, more the boredom that comes from too many obligations that give too little joy. Before I was bored I was angry, and I'm just now realizing how closely related those two emotions can be.
It is, sometimes, easier not to care at all. And so I've reduced my feelings to the body-level. I'm a body, not a brain, and my body simply wants:
1) To stretch out in front of a window in the sunshine and fall asleep.
2) To eat cupcakes and drink coffee at Dozen with my friend D.
3) To get in a magic transporter machine and find myself at Ten Thousand Waves.
4) To sit in the grass in strange, new, beautiful parks and watch people.
5) Food that nourishes me, that hasn't been sprayed with Crisco and sealed in plastic for shipping to a chain restaurant location.
6) To read a book, a love story that puts all others to shame.
7) To be back in DC, the closest thing I can identify to the concept of home. Where I know how to wander, and I know all the good, sunny spots a lonely person can go to be soothed.
*The "Exorcist Stairs", Georgetown neighborhood, Washington, DC.
Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year's horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.
by James Wright
Burt Clifton.
Every spring, the guys prune the orchard. And every spring, I look out on the branches scattered everywhere and think to myself: "Self, you should really search Martha's website for directions on forcing branches to bloom."
But I have never actually bothered to do that. Right now it seems impossible that this grey, depressing landscape will soon turn into this. I did see buds today, though. Perhaps there is hope.
I woke up this morning to find half an inch of wet snow sinking into the mud in our yard. Bleech! I am so ready for good weather! How about you?
Spring in Montana is more depressing to me than winter. All that melting snow makes everything brown and muddy. Mud is everywhere - in my kitchen, in my car, on my pants, all over my dog. I'm ready for sunshine.
I used to live in Edinburgh, Scotland and though Edinburgh had its share of depressing weather, they knew how to "do" Spring. Some [uncharacteristically] brilliant committee, at some unknown time, decided to plant daffodil bulbs under the grass in every public green space.
Come Spring, carpets of daffodils greet you on your way to work. Not a bad way to start the day.
I've been working on this painting the last few weeks. It was inspired by a painting on the cover of Country Home's final issue. I couldn't find an artist credit anywhere in the magazine, so I decided to see if I could copy it.
It's not something I usually do, but my friend (and enabler) D. convinced me that I "could learn alot" by copying. And of course, its true that art students everywhere copy the masters with exactly that goal in mind.
It was a good project for me. I've been feeling really bored lately. And disturbed by that since I've always felt boredom is for people with no imagination whatsoever. And that can't be me. I threw it out in the twitter universe and got this back from long-time friend @opossom: "Boredom, like rage, is a form of fear. And fear is the absence of love. Love your work? Simple answers at simple times. Luck."
And @Opossom isn't wrong. My work projects are plentiful and all-consuming. A good thing. But by the end of the day my creativity is sapped.
In spite of myself, I did learn from copying this painting. I saw how the artist picked up leftover paint from the palette and blended it with the skin and t-shirt of the subject. Greens, oranges, reds, blues across bubble-gum pink and white. Cobalt blue streaks in the hair to give it texture.
The lips are "mine" and I was pleased when my husband told me, without any prompting, that the lips were his favorite part. I photographed the painting's evolution and put the photos in an album on Facebook. Are we friends on Facebook? If not, friend me.
And if you can tell me who the original artist from Country Living might be..
When I'm in New York City, I love to drop into a shop called The Blue Tree. Not much of website --too bad for you--but the store is a garden of discovery.
Blue Tree is owned by the actress, Phoebe Cates (Gremlins, Drop Dead Fred) and I have actually seen her in there unpacking boxes. No joke. She lives in the neighborhood and leaves all the acting to Kevin.
Anyway, the POINT of this story is that more three years ago, I saw this purse at Blue Tree and I'm still thinking about it . The Birds and the Bees from Femme Sud's Ex Libris collection. I didn't want to spend the money. Should have.
I returned from another trip to New York at the end of January, and I'm still thinking about this ring. What do you think? Should I get it? I don't want to spend the money, it isn't essential, but......
A year ago, we were looking at:
1) Cynthia Treen's felted rocks. I just bought some wool roving this week and may give this a shot on Saturday.
2) I was remembering some of my favorite poems.
3) And knitting scarves.
Two years ago at about this time, I started Two Kitties.
1) "What's On My Mind" was my very first post.
2) "Winter Wheat" is still a favorite.
3) And after two years, and hundreds of dollars spent on fabulous buttons, I still haven't made these rings. But I will.
Thanks for reading me and leaving comments. I have loved getting to know all of you! I know my posts can be rather random - some say that is what the enjoy the most. I hope you keep on keeping on with Two Kitties.
In his book, The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People, Steven Covey explains the benefits of the Habits:
"In harmony with the natural laws of growth, they provide an incremental, sequential, highly integrated approach to the development of personal and interpersonal effectiveness. They move us progressively on a Maturity Continuum from dependence to independence to interdependence....they become the basis of a person's character, creating an empowering center of correct maps from which an individual can effectively solve problems, maximize opportunities, and continually learn and integrate other principles in an upward spiral of growth."
This is the kind of management program that would drive me to use crystal meth.
What would the world be like - at work, at home, in conflict and in love - if everyone chose to be polite, but direct? Compare the work of British poet Carol Ann Duffy. There is no doubt about what she is thinking and feeling:
Words, Wide Night
Somewhere
on the other side of this wide night
and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.
The room is turning slowly away from the moon.
This is pleasurable. Or shall I cross that out and say
it is sad? In one of the tenses I singing
an impossible song of desire that you cannot hear.
La lala la. See? I close my eyes and imagine the dark hills I would have to
cross
to reach you. For I am in love with you
and this is what it is like or what it is like in words
.
Think about last week. Would it/Could it have gone any more smoothly if someone (or you) had just been straightforward (but polite) about something that was on your mind?
1) Letterpress stationery. It used to be special - now it seems like it is absolutely everywhere.
2) W Magazine's endless fascination with the Jolie-Pitt-Aniston fiasco.
3) Novels about writers writing novels. Like The Good Husband or A Family Daughter. Writing made up of too many fragmentary details, too many detailed details. Whenever I read a paragraph about an imaginary novelist meeting their imaginary publicist for lunch,or the struggle said imaginary author is having while coming up with a new book idea...
4) Holocaust movies. The best, and last, movie you should ever see about the Holocaust is a Dutch film called "Black Book." The director captured the moral complexity and ambivalence of ordinary citizens. This is the movie Tom Cruise ripped off for Valkyrie. He tried to make up for it by giving the same actors parts in his film, but it doesn't make Valkyrie the better movie.
5) The environment of manufactured perfection on some craft blogs. It's all rough and tumble here at Two Kitties. Sweatpants and spray paint and we're cranky until noon.
What are you tired of?
We decided to take the weekend off and fly back to Montana for some R & R. The two kitties love to fly and always make the trip with us.
We took a new route, leaving Redmond, Oregon heading first to Dillon, Montana to avoid some clouds. Just a little bit of white in the high desert near Prineville, Oregon.
As we came closer to Montana, the clouds parted and we decided to reroute up the Swan Valley toward Kalispell. It was a beautiful trip and saved us an hour.
We passed over beautiful pine forests made almost black and white by the thick snow cover. I loved flying over the Swan River.
It's always nice to come back here after time away but there was plenty of heavy, wet snow waiting for us.
I hitched a ride on Mike's tractor down to the house. Not strictly necessary - I could have walked - but its more exciting when you have to balance on one leg and squeeze someone's head to take a photo than if you don't.
Not our best photo, but a 10 out of 10 for the gymnastics it required. Lots of snow cupcakes on top of the posts down at the house.
I'm enjoying the winter views of the lake.
There is plenty to catch up here, and lots of work I need to do, but I've had the flu for almost two weeks. I think, just for one day, I'm just going to settle into my big chair with the kitties and read. I want to finish one of the books that has been on my nightstand.
What do you have planned today?
I've been listening to Feist lately. I like the lyrics to the song, 1,2,3,4.
When I was a teenager, I thought a lot about running away. I didn't imagine a more exciting life, I imagined a life that was calm, quiet, and stable.
The scenario depended on the miracle arrival of a tiny lakeside cottage and an old VW Beetle convertible. Nothing much happened once I got there. It was just a place I imagined as peaceful and happy, where I could be myself.
Then I imagined that when I fell in love, me and he would just sit by the fire with our various animals, cook wonderful dinners and read books together.
What did you hope for when you were a teenager?
When things get stressful, I like to watch my White Kitty sleep. He leads a simple, grateful life.
I just returned from Miami, where I spent a few days meeting with my client, The PlayGround Theatre.
Earlier in the week, Mrs. G asked, "What's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to you?" I'm still pondering that question.
Mike is a thoughtful, totally loving guy, but he's 100% dude. His idea of a romantic weekend away together would be driving around eastern Montana scoping the runways of small airports. He came back from "hunting" saying he wished I'd been with him instead of his friend, Bill. That he could have imagined me out there, "tramping through the woods with my gun at my side" looking for elk. Uh huh.
All that's missing is a Willie Nelson concert. Now you know why I sit under the trees sometimes and ponder what happened to the other Mike I met in Miami. What about you? What's the most romantic thing anyone has ever said to you?
The sculptor Alberto Giacometti said,
"Sometimes it's very tempting to be satisfied with what's easy, particularly if people tell you it's good....What's essential is to work without any preconception whatever, without knowing in advance what the picture is going to look like....It is very, very, important to avoid all preconception, to try to see only what exits...to translate one's sensation."
Another good spot is the Freer Gallery at the Smithsonian. Art at the Freer isn't as familiar or predictable as what you find in the National Gallery. No Waterlilies. It's much less crowded. It's unusual. The people in white tennis shoes don't go there. Visit the Peacock Room designed by James McNeill Whistler. This 1919 article from the New York Times is worth printing.
Today I went through my closet, FLYlady style. Three surgeries in three years have taken a toll on my body, and I decided that I may have to come to terms with the possibility that things might never be the same. For awhile, I've been wanting to go through my clothes and store everything I can't wear right now. I did a little every day, throwing things into a paper bag if they didn't fit until the bag tipped over and exploded. It's been looking like this for about two months. I just couldn't get through it.
Yesterday, I spent some time in the cherry orchard with Buddy The Dog.
We threw the baseball a few times, but Buddy is a country dog. Dumb chase games are for city dogs, but he'll indulge me and fetch about three times before going back to sniffing, pointing, and eating grass. After awhile, we sat down in the crunchy leaves to enjoy the sunshine filtering through the yellow leaf canopy.
I sent a letter prayer out into the world this week. A prayer to hold in your hand. It felt like putting a Japanese lantern out on the water, each word a tiny hope for forgiveness sent out into the dark.
I've thought about making a garden in the woods near the art studio, where I can plant all the other hopes. A few weeks ago, I drove over to the East side of Glacier National Park to take a closer look at the prayer trees near Two Medicine. This side of the Park is on the Blackfoot Indian Reservation.
I was disappointed by the amount of trash under the trees.
And then I stood still for a moment and realized I was looking at unopened packages of tobacco, matches, t-shirts, bottles of pop.
An offering plate, direct to the stars.
To mark Banned Books Week, I read Carolyn Mackler's The Earth, My Butt, and Other Big Round Things. Slightly overweight teenager Virginia Shreves is the heroine. She's the daughter of ambitious, intelligent, emotionally checked-out parents and the sister of a guy expelled from NYU for date-rape.
The book has Virginia is getting felt up by a boy named Froggy on the very first page. Froggy is a guy she makes out with for the convenience factor - he takes the bus to her side of town every Monday after school for a trombone lesson. They kiss for 45 minutes, he leaves for his lesson, and then they ignore each other the rest of the week in school.
Reading the book as an adult, it's almost painful how little Virginia asks of Froggy (or from her parents). These are the breadcrumbs of love - but they are an important part of the story. The most important thread in this book - to me - is the struggle for Virginia to protect her emotional honesty, and this is how she gets there.
I appreciated watching Virginia take risks to find
love and care from the people around her. I could identify with and remember what it was like
to have parents who either wanted to be someone else or wanted you to
be someone else.Not washing over the painful
things as if they never happened.Only two people in this book - Virginia and her sister (who gives up and joins the Peace Corps to get away from the family) - are really talking. The sister has a conversation with Virginia one day about sex. She asks,
"I know Mom and Dad have told you about sex. But what do you know about boys?"
I've been thinking about how I might answer that question ever since. Leave me a comment and let me know what you know about boys. And I mean the things you know NOW that you're grown up and you've got all figured out. What you'd tell a teenager girl, even though you know it probably won't make a bit of difference.
Use a fake name if you need to - your email address will never be displayed.
I bought these small clay figures at Gallery 43 in Pittsburgh. (I'll have to find the name of the artist for you in the giant stack of Pittsburgh papers on my desk.)
Their fat little bodies were made to be bells, and there is a tiny, dangling clay head inside. On the gallery shelf, they were hidden in the corner behind more dramatically painted work. D pointed out that they seemed a little lost.
They seem at home here, in my woods. The expressions on their faces makes me think of the word 'wonder' - perhaps 'marvel' - when I see them looking up at the big tall trees.
I'm home, but I'm having trouble adjusting to the thought that I'll never see the inside of Dozen Cupcakes bakery again.
Allen creates three dimensional collages from books found at thrift stores. The work is then photographed and printed on 4 x 6" paper. The photo is as important as the thing, in other words. Kind of like the way Andy Goldsworthy approaches his work.
You can purchase Allen's book, Uncovered, from the Aperture Foundation. Allen worked with long-time collaborator Chip Kidd on the cover design of his own book.
..."the family, friends and neighbors -- people sometimes not seen in years but who suddenly turn up, like corks bobbing to the surface, each one awakening the memory of quarrels that started back in the mists of time, past loves, former grudges, engagements broken then forgotten, inheritances and law suits...such a gathering of ghosts! In big cities, people either see each other all the time or never, it's simpler. Here...Corks in water, that's what I say. Hey, presto, there they are! And what a stir they cause, how many old memories they dredge up. Then down they go again and, for ten years, they're forgotten..."
-- Irene Nemirovsky, "Fire in the Blood"
Lately, it seems that everyone I encounter is either gathering up old hurts or trying to push them down. Death, illness, broken friendships, memories of the old self in the old life gladly left behind. Like it or not, it's the pull of the planets forcing us to look back, present yourself, try to forget; be forgotten.
The really interesting stuff happens, of course, when the old life bobs up within the new. Sylvestre, the narrator of Irene Nemirovsky's "Fire in the Blood" makes this observation at a wedding reception, watching the interactions between locals and city relatives rarely seen.
I thought something like that myself when I attended my cousin's wedding a few weeks ago. I guessed it had been eighteen years since I'd seen some of them. I wondered which awkward memories they would dredge up for my new-ish husband. And then the questions they won't ask me, but might ask each other, like "What happened to the other guy?" I'd like to hear the answer to that one, actually, since the most interesting bits are the ones I have always kept to myself. Mostly, anyway.
But really, no one asked me ANYTHING, and in a way, I was disappointed. The network of family observers had gotten there first and their version, I guess, was considered as valid as my own. Even though the odds are that it's probably pretty far from the truth I would tell. It's funny when someone (mistakenly) thought I was practicing medicine in Wyoming. Not as funny when they don't seem interested in the right answer.
This social dysfunction touches more folk than just my family. No one seems allowed to tell their own stories anymore - just consider the drama around "memoirgate." The crisis of representation that brought cultural anthropology to it's post-modern knees is the same logic that has fed the radical growth of accusations and personal memory. Truth turned on it's ear.
You can remember your life however you want to, but ultimately, your family, friends, colleagues, even the building janitors have more ethnographic authority about your life than you ever will. Just a small part of the conversation I've been having over at Citizen Reader about truth in non-fiction.
We spent a lot of the wedding weekend hanging out with Bill, "The Dentist." He's a long time friend of the family and is always there to celebrate or mourn with us - whatever the case may be. It was strangely comforting to realize that, over the last thirty years, Bill has met and talked with most of my family - all but six of them now dead.
After spending a few days with him I came to envy his way with people. Bill has a unique ability: he can pull out the positive in each and every personal interaction. And it's genuine, not learned, forced or contrived and is simply, positively, unflappable. It's the way he perceives and navigates the world.
It goes without saying that I wish I had that skill. We did have a short conversation about the downside of what happens when you always see best in people. I used to be that way. Selectively, anyway.
Over the last few years I've trained myself NOT to do it - sometimes an a**hole is just an a**hole. Stated more intelligently - we agreed that seeing the best in every situation leaves you susceptible, unsuspecting, to characters and environments that can really cause hurt.
But I'd rather be like Bill, given the chance.
The other day two friends (who don't know each other) asked me how my novel was coming. Ummmm......
I thought it might be worth circling back to my New Year's resolutions - to refresh my memory and see if I've made any progress toward my goals:
1) Buddy and I have not taken the therapy dog exam yet. I need to attend a weekend training workshop and I haven't managed to move to the top of the wait-list.
2) I loved my New York City Ballet Workout classes. It's great to be so old that the teacher is happy if you just "hop" instead of grand jete. Now that I'm back in Montana, I have the DVD from Netflix but haven't tried it yet. Lots of long river walks with Buddy and serious yard work instead.
3) I am still working on a website for my consulting business after a few stops and starts. I did design a new banner for my website, all by my own self. Not perfect, but o.k.
4) I did finish knitting my first sweater, and it turned out o.k. Not perfect, but o.k. I sent it to the artist Debra Tomson Williams as a Valentine.
5) My book. I went through a spurt of writing in the winter, took a leave-of-absence, set it down, and haven't picked it up again. It's time. I'm comforted by Anne Lamott's comment to an interviewer that it takes her a first draft just to get to know the characters.
6) I'm over the cookie thing. I still eat them occasionally, but I'm not baking as a comfort-process anymore. I'm feeling so much better after this surgery that I keep busy enjoying work, gardening, art or something else. I didn't make the list of more peaceful times but I don't feel like I need to either. So that's good.
7) I wanted to start drawing, but in six months I have not picked up the proverbial pencil.
So....about 50%, really. And still time to keep going.
The power went out the other day while I was working in the studio. This happens more often than you might think. We have one line running south from town and all it takes is someone to crash a car into a utility pole or a dead tree to take down a power line.
In this particular instance, I happened to be rubbing some crayon on a photo printed from my inkjet. I was curious to see what would happen to the crayon if I blew my heat gun on it - would it give an encaustic effect? But then I remembered I couldn't use the heat gun - no electricity.
So I busied myself with some other projects. As the minutes ticked by, I realized I wouldn't be able to iron the fusible interfacing to my fabric book. And on this rainy day it was a little bit darker in the studio than I like it. My frustrations gathered. Intensified. I wasn't going to be able to make art on an otherwise appointment-less Saturday. It is the year 2008. And I had NO ELECTRICITY.
And then I had kind of a grand-mal moment when all my excuses stepped out of the shadows - the light switched OFF so to speak - and I could see how I was using things - materials, equipment, space - to enable my creative insecurity. In the dark, I made a list of my crutches:
You see where I'm going with this?
It is a kind of perfectionism, and in my case, it's a fear of finishing. Once things are finished, they will be judged. And when it comes to criticism of something I've put my heart into, I'll admit I'm weak. Even though the business side of me knows that what I see on artists' websites are the best examples of their work - not the work-in-progress, the experiments that resulted in failure, and the simply ugly that happened along the way.
My goal for summer is to finish the projects I have started. This one. This one. This one. This one. And that's just a start. It is an ever-growing mountain of unfinished art. And if I can do that, I will have enough work to photograph and submit to shows. No excuses.
Things I miss about living in a big city:
Things I don't miss:
I have to hit the streets today hoping to find something acceptable to wear to a summer wedding. Ten weeks post-op I still have swelling that will have to be taken into account. This pouch doesn't just blend in with the rest of my fat - it has it's own moods and opinions about what "we" do and wear, growing and shrinking depending on what I eat, how I exercise (yard work is o.k. - but it doesn't like hiking), and the comfort of my clothing. Yes to the Eileen Fisher pants, NO to the Calvin Klein jeans.
This morning I spent a few minutes on Jessica Hagy's website, "Indexed." This card seemed to express exactly how I feel at the moment. I'll buy anything I can find that makes me, and my swollen belly, look acceptable. Wish me luck.
Brush away all the fluff around what I do for money and you'll find that, at heart, I'm a cultural anthropologist. My degrees confirm it, too, but I don't do fieldwork for a living - at least not really. I still do fieldwork every day though. I can't help it. It's my second nature. I'm always looking, always observing and finding patterns.
Lately, I've been making notes about the ways that people make prayer physical. I came across Louise.Stringer's photo on Flickr of a prayer tree on a Russian island and it reminded me of one I see here in Montana. My husband and I like to drive up to the east side of Glacier Park, the side that borders the Indian reservation near Browning.
There is a 'prayer tree' in a grove of aspen just off the back road headed for Two Medicine. The grove is at the edge of a cow pasture filled with wild, untamed grass. Stretches of dry, golden prairie in the background rather than big, tall trees like you find on this side of the park. It's lonely there. Windswept and almost abandoned. I often think about this prayer tree and wonder if it is one pilgrim - or many - who visit there. Next time I go by, I'm definitely going to take some photos.
There are other ways I've noticed people making their prayers physical:
I've read about a cowgirl that ties a piece of paper to a tumbleweed and lets it roll in the wind.
In the movie, Lost in Translation, Scarlett Johanssen's character visits a shrine in Kyoto and ties a prayer to a cherry tree.
In Falling Angels, the third daughter - the fat one that everyone ignores - takes up home improvement. Before she nails the final wood panel on the wall of the rec room, she crafts a shrine to her dead baby brother - the one no one talks about - and hides it in between the studs.
Tibetan Buddhists hang prayer flags and spin clicking prayer wheels as they walk along the street.
The writer Anne Lamott uses the drawer in her nightstand as God's
"Inbox." She writes a prayer down on a slip of paper and "files" it
there.
If you know of other good examples, drop me a comment!
And I mean just say NO. Uuuuuuuuuuggggggly. There is no imaginably good reason for you to wear an amphibious high heel. 
I've been working pretty steady in the art studio the last few weeks. Not exactly marathon sessions, but at least a couple of hours each day, and I'm making art, more than craft.
I've been working on two handmade books this week. I find that I am obsessed with bicycle and ferris wheels - a thread picked up from some work I did a few years ago but hadn't looked at until more recently.
Some of the structures were inspired by work I saw in Esther K. Smith's book. She does beautiful work. It's hard to keep going when I compare my work to hers.
Sometimes I wish I had a printing press, but then again, you can do many things with a piece of office paper and a color photocopier. I went to a workshop back in 2000 that was entirely about how to use the photocopier in the construction of artist books. The two day class was taught by British artist Sue Doggett at the Minnesota Center for Book Arts.
Many of the photocopy techniques are published in Doggett's book, along with other ideas for making artist books. (Did you know you can preview entire chapters of books on Google?)
These mushrooms are growing on a ponderosa pine in the woods next to our house. I like the really intense orange against the purple-blue bark.
I'll be honest - I haven't been very blog-inspired the last two weeks. The weather here in Montana has been positively, unusually, dermatologically, sublime and we've spent more time out of the house than in it.
On Saturday, Mike and I drove down to Missoula to see Junior Brown in concert. To see Junior live was Mike's dream come true. And he is an incredible guitarist - if you've got time, have a look at the video clip. The show rocked.
On Sunday, we wound our way back home through the back roads from Missoula towards Polson. We drove by this barn outside of Ronan - probably the most photographed barn in all of Montana.
The barn is on every calendar. Step back ten feet and you would see the houses and farms that surround it, but just like this - it's the stereotypical image everyone has of old Montana.
There are lots of babies around.
And we passed through St. Ignatius, which has a Mennonite community. I have a pretty bad You 
Tube video of a couple Sunday driving in their horse and buggy posted here.
I just liked the way the pasture horses were so interested in the buggy. Not much happens out there in a day, I guess.
Dang. It was one of THOSE days in the studio.
I threw harpoons at Lou Beach's whale and it wouldn't die for me.
Nothing worked.
I hated what I made.
I wasted precious and rare materials.
I wanted to give art up for good.
I've spent the rest of the day trying to convince myself that process really is as important as product.
That's what I tell everyone else.
And I believe it when I say it to them. But that logic isn't working on me.
(Lou Beach illustration)
