Metamorphosism
January 31, 2005
How to build an igloo
One shovel at a time.
First it has to snow. And it has to stay cold long enough for you to get the igloo built. You'll need a couple hours, and daylight, so the snow will have to last until a weekend most likely.
You take your snowshovel and pile up a bunch of snow. If it's really deep you can just use the snow from the immediate vicinity of the igloo itself, tossing shovels-ful into a pile.
Or, if the snow is not quite that deep, say only a foot and a half deep or two feet, you'll exhaust the vicinity of the igloo which is only a pile at this point, a pile with an igloo inside, and you'll have to go further afield for your snow. You will shovel off the terrace and the steps and the pile you made over by the fence when you shoveled clear the driveway.
Could be this will still not suffice. You don't want to move any snow near the hedgehog houses, because it's probably quite peaceful under there. So you're walking out to the street, taking a shovelful from the pile at the end of your drive way or, when that is exhausted, taking one from the pile (pretty clean) made in the street itself in front of your house by the snowplow.
And carrying the shovel-ful back to the pile, dumping it, returning to the street for another.
Shovel by shovel.
You don't count the shovels or the trips you make. You start out doing this, but soon learn that it is not motivating. It is a trip of, what, fifteen or twenty meters one-way.
It takes hundreds of trips.
If you had known this before you started!
But luckily you didn't, and eventually the pile is the size of an igloo.
Then you hollow it out. You think how much this would suck if it collapsed after all that work, so you leave the walls and ceiling so thick only a cat could fit inside. You tell yourself, your kid might fit. If not, you can always hollow it out a little more.
This coming weekend.
Pointless
On my way home from a pointless drive into Vienna yesterday morning, angry at the world and especially at work for requiring I come in for no reason, pointless, pointless, eight deer ran across a field in deep snow.
Then I went into the backyard and build an igloo for Gamma. After which I forbade her ever to go inside it because it might collapse on her.
I'm a sick piece of work.
We inspected the igloo this morning prior to me pulling her to school on a sled. It's still a bit small inside for her, she can't quite sit up in it. I told her I'd hollow it out for a her more. I told her it's okay to play in, just make sure she's not alone.
First contact with Beta since her departure for France. We all miss her. Gamma just misses her, period, all the time. I feel de-lionized, in a neutral to negative way. Alpha is suffering more than she'd expected. The main cat is sleeping on Beta's dirty clothes and not getting off.
Saturday we went sledding. Gamma whined less this year. It was quite enjoyable. We slept well that night.
January 28, 2005
Psst, indeed
Currently, 98.9% of those voting in the Fistful of Euros something something awards think Metamorphosism is not the best personal weblog. How'd I get nominated? Thanks for telling me, David Weman. I'm honored. Voting is still going on, but I would like to thank Mr. Weman for letting me know I'm on the list, and all of you for you know, and especially those who send me pictures of themselves in the shower etc. And thanks to Alpha for all the material. Special thanks goes to my turtle tortoise, who is still hibernating, I hope. And to the hedgehogs. And whoever invented the cello. And the Fiat auto company.
The blizzard of '05
This is the most snow we've ever gotten here in your lifetime, I told Gamma.
She nodded solemly. Then she plopped back down into the snow and swam. She invited me to join her. I said sorry, I have to go into town now for a therapist appointment.
Almost two feet of snow in just a few hours during the night. I took the next day off to shovel our our house and the inlaws', so that they could go home again and stop staying at our house.
I told my therapist they were staying with us. I told him he'd probably find it fascinating, from a professional viewpoint.
Today Alpha and I were at the airport to see off Beta. Got a couple hugs out of it. Waved. Got lost on the way home. Alpha made the mistake of following me and got lost too and I let her go around me and followed her for a while until I was back on track.
The kid's plane hasn't even landed and I already feel weird.
See the progress I'm making? Getting in touch with my feelings? How do you feel, Mig?
Weird. I feel weird.
Very good. Expand.
No matter what else I'm doing, I'm standing low on University Avenue in Seattle looking uphill past the University Book Store. It is summer. This image is superimposed over whatever else I'm doing. A dream, during the day.
A daydream.
That's not what I said. I said University Avenue looking uphill in summer, and also I feel as if a lion has been extracted from my spine. And now I see the parking lot behind the bookstore.
I see.
And a small plane flying low over Lake Union. Getting ready to land. So hopefully it's a seaplane. I used to work at a bank in Seattle and they demolished a building across the street but I didn't see it happen. Just came to work one Monday morning and a few windows were broken.
I see. Go on.
My wife remembers snow like this from back when she was Gamma's age or so. This is one of those snowfalls you remember.
January 25, 2005
Questions within questions
Is it materialistic of me to jones for a cello of my own or is it giving my musical side the recognition it deserves?
And if it's okay to jones for a cello of my own how expensive of a cello is it okay for me to jones for?
And if it's okay for me to jones for a medium-priced cello of my own and my cello teacher mentions he's seen several nice ones lately, is it okay for me to seriously consider buying one of them? And if that's okay, where the hell is the money supposed to come from? Is it okay to hit up the American relatives for a loan? Or maybe even a "loan"?
And if it's okay for me to spend a reasonable sum of money on a genuine cello, oughtn't I spend an equal amount on my wife? Or would it be enough to buy her a musical instrument of her own? Would that be generous, or would it be cynical and miserly, seeing as how she plays the recorder?
Or is that just her problem?
It's just, you know. I've wanted a cello of my own for a long time. Since I started this blog. Since I started the predecessor of the predecessor of this blog.
Two hands. On this hand, I think about myself all the time anyway and am selfish and self-centered and egotistic and neglectful of others and insensitive and a frustrated bully. On that hand, I'm making a lot of progress on the frustration and bully things and you have any idea how pretty a cello is? Or whatever instrument it is you play? A new instrument, belonging to you?
But none of that matters.
On the one hand I'm broke, on the other hand life confronts me with cellos for sale.
If it's a test, what is the right answer? Jump for once and buy the cello, or be frugal for once and not buy it?
An acquaintance mentioned a PC for sale recently, used, ultra cheap, but it was gone by the time I decided to take it.
It's easy to say, go for it guy, you only live once. It's not your money.
It's easy to say, when you're eighty and phasing in and out of consciousness you'll think, where is that hot nurse and, did I ever buy that cello or not? so buy it. It's not your money.
So to make it harder and more realistic, I'm charging $50/€40 for comments on this post.
Or not. Like I'm going to come to your house and shake you down for the money. No, I'd send Alpha. Or Beta!
I went to see Blade-Trinity with Beta last night. One last action movie before she goes to France. It was so nice. I like that kid. She's such a girly-girl: she wants throwing knives for her birthday.
January 24, 2005
The scientific method
Hypothesis: Corn meal, while adding interesting elements of taste and texture to Mig's Interesting Pizza Dough [Note: I would be willing to change the name to Mig's Incredible Pizza Dough in exchange for a deal with the marketers of The Incredibles. Or not.] can build clumps baked to a hardness capable of breaking a molar and requiring an emergency trip to the dentist, where he takes forever to get the dental dam thing on you and his assistant, although a pretty Gothic-type pale blonde, sits just out of your line of sight and is a bit lax about sucking the water and saliva back out of your mouth so you half-drown during the repair process and when you get back to work you TWALK WIKE A STWOKE ICKTIN until after lunch due to the novocaine.
Experiment results: Hypothesis confirmed.
On harps, sleep, murder and creativity
Not necessarily in that order.
The more balanced and un-frustrated I get, the better I have my anger under control. Nevertheless, when a co-worker woke me up at 5 AM Saturday or was it Sunday morning, then hung up without what I considered sufficient apology or self-identification (I recognized his voice) for pressing the wrong button on his cellphone, my black heart immediately decided to break his neck and drop him down the elevator shaft at work to make it look like an accident. Just like that, the plan was hatched fully formed. Only afterwards did I feel sorry for him for having to work at that ungodly hour. When I told that to my wife, she suggested he just wanted people to feel sorry for him, and had probably called all our co-workers doing that.
The harp transport grows more complicated. It looks like we leave as planned this Friday night, take the train (complete with car) to the other end of Austria and drive from there, refreshed, the following morning. We already bought a toll sticker to use the Swiss freeway; then we found out that going via non-EU member Switzerland would cause considerable customs problems, requiring documentation that is hard for us to get on such short notice. So instead, we're going via Germany, it seems, which is 100 km longer but in addition to eliminating the customs documentation problem as we can stay in the EU the whole time, also skirts the Alps rather than going straight through them. Which is good, as it is starting to snow here. No telling what the weather will be like at the end of the week, but I have to think this is a better solution.
We'll see.
What else, creativity. I painted two pictures this weekend that I'd been carrying around in my body for a while. I say two pictures, actually a diptych. And, I say "I painted" when actually the brush painted them. Or something else. Not me. My mind was blank the whole time. My hands squeezed paints out of tubes, mixed in turpentine and linseed oil, devoid of thought.
I like how they turned out - half abstract half not. Everything different than expected - color, form.
On composing
At seven, Gamma is still too young to drink absinthe, so I sat beside her at the piano and drank it while she composed. "What is that? How can you drink that? Get that out of my sight," she said.
"The notes have to add up to four," I said.
"Why?"
I pointed at the time signature. "4/4 time."
"Okay."
Composition tip: you can't go wrong with black keys. Much non-Western music is based on the pentatonic scale. Her teacher gave her a half-finished piece, and her assignment was to write the second half of the song, black keys only.
So she doodled around on the piano for half an hour, writing stuff down and then trying it out. She ended it with two whole notes, which I thought was a cool idea.
January 20, 2005
Secret Santa guided meditation
Wandering around blindly in the cold at lunch your hands are freezing and the coat you're wearing is two inches shorter than your suit coat underneath making you feel like a dork, suddenly there it is, the phrase Secret Santa. What does it mean? Is Life throwing you a bone, an idea for a twisted little story?
Yes.
Is it pointing you towards an interesting blog that you find when you google the phrase?
Yes.
But it's also pointing you towards your own inner Secret Santa; the being who knows what you really want.
Do you want to meet him? The idea strikes you as funny at first, whimsical, or dopey, as dopey as the phrase. Until you recall where Santa comes from: that old Nordic guy who lives in the ice.
Jesus, google it yourself, I can't be arsed. I'm not supposed to be reading this week.
Secret Santa was just the trigger, the phrase it took to get you thinking about him. He has no name.
Close your eyes. It's cold and you've been traveling a long time to see him. Do you even want to? Would you rather turn around?
He knows you.
What's he look like to you? Gandalf? That guardian of the bridge in Monty Python and the Holy Grail only scarier? A biker? He stands there in the storm and you can go no further until you deal with him.
He knows what you don't.
That's the gift in his bag.
In German, Gift means poison
It will cost you everything.
This is where I'd normally start to make fun of this, but I'll pass.
January 19, 2005
Oh, right.
Just remembered what it was I wanted to say when I logged on. Synchronicity and stuff.
You know how life sometimes sends you what you're looking for or asking for?
I was complaining recently about a dearth in my life of, among other things, romance and adventure. In a week or so, my wife and I will be driving a harp to France, taking the Alpine route through Austria, Switzerland and France. For those of you in the Southern hemisphere, it's winter here right now. Adventure factors: Alps, winter, Doblo. Romance factors: harp, France, wife.
And I was thinking that I need a better home PC among other things, and the tech guy today told me about a used one he knew about, cheap. Not sure if I want it, but it's very likely.
- Just for the record, here are a few more things I need, life: sex, Macallan's single malt, a filling in that molar where the old one fell out, sex, a nice cello, a new suit, some clothes, a bookcase, a stereo, sex, literary mentors and muses, a laptop, a fat win in the lottery, a literary agent, sex, and a new shower head. Among other things.
Trend
Horst is happy.
I'm still not reading, I just went to the Aardvark to see if my internet connection was working.
Naked lady tie
Is that a new tie, dad?
No, it's, it was at the back of the closet and I was looking around and found it just now and thought I'd wear it.
How do you tie a knot like that?
I'll show you sometime. (Just not right now because I notice it's my naked lady tie a co-worker got me in Italy, I guess, because it says "100% ACETATO" on a little label the back, and when you fold it open there she is, full-color on a white ACETATO lining, kneeling under a tree in a field somewhere. The naked lady, not my co-worker).
January 18, 2005
Fast
I bought a USB memory stick for Beta and one for myself. Impulse purchase, it was there on the counter at the stationery store, next to the candybars. Only 64 MB but cheap, so I got two. Mine works well on the office PC, which runs XP. Can't get the fuckers to run on our home PC, though, which still has Windows 98. None of the drivers I download from the company's website work.
So anyway. I'm moving everything from the diskettes I carry around in my pockets to this little USB stick. Mostly manuscripts of some sort. At least I can tinker with them at work. Only on my lunch break of course.
Eventually I'm going to archive all the files on the home PC on CDs and do something rash. Reinstall the operating system, or something newer. I fear the PC itself is too old for XP.
Anyway, one of these diskettes, the next to last one, has no label, just an X written on it in gold marker. It crashes my work PC whenever I insert it. I tried it ten times just to make sure. Yep, appears to be something to do with this diskette. Don't even have time to do a virus scan of it or anything. Just, insert that's it. Not even a blue screen.
Whatever. Technology mystifies me. It's still a big deal for me when I go into the kitchen in the morning, open the dishwasher and presto, the dishes are all clean! And I distinctly remember loading them the night before, dirty!
I'm on a fast, you see.
It's part of this thing I'm doing that I oughtn't talk about to get my creativity flowing. One of my tasks this week: don't read. Don't watch TV. Since I don't have a TV, I'm not listening to the radio neither and not monkeying around on the Internet.
So if you don't see me in your referrer stats this week, it's nothing personal. I don't even re-read what I'm writing here.
Not reading is harder than I thought. I don't know how many times I caught myself with an International Herald Tribune in my hand this morning.
January 17, 2005
The eyeball weasel
Tell us a wild story, dad.
I'm tired.
My dad tells the best wild stories of anyone, she tells her friend.
Okay, Gamma. What would you like to hear? A scary story?
Yes!
Okay.
A friend of Gamma's was sleeping over Saturday night. I told them the story of the eyeball weasel. Maybe your mother told you this one when you were little. My version went like this: when I was your age and my parents got tired of me and sent me to the boarding school...
Kids went blind, eyeballs eaten out of their heads at night. Put to work on stationary bicycles, generating electricity for the boarding school, cause, you know, what else can they do when they're blind?
Turns out the headmistress's pet is an eyeball weasel, living in the walls and coming out at night to eat the eyes of children who are not sleeping as they should be. I catch it in a bag, stun it.
Is the weasel still alive?
In a zoo somewhere. Best thing against eyeball weasels is simply to keep your eyes shut at night. Also: oranges. Oranges repel them like garlic vampires.
Gamma's friend loved the story. Gamma couldn't get to sleep until she placed an orange over each eye and slept like that.
Sunday, I had to tell her the story of how I taught Mary the Berry Fairy to ride the bicycle to make up for it.
Bug
I've got a couple Bug strips stuck in the pipeline.
Eating apples sometimes helps, I hear.
It's like this. I haven't felt very buglike lately. I haven't felt like being funny or even entertaining.
What have I felt like instead?
I've felt like an old guy.
I've felt like getting up early and writing in my notebook before breakfast.
I've felt like, what's so bad about solitary confinement?
I've felt stuck again, but on a higher level this time. Like, here, the monsters are faster and meaner, but my gun shoots bigger bullets too.
I don't know.
Lots of things happening at once. I will find time for the Bug soon. I still like him.
My daughter is going to France. She will be gone for what, six months nearly. I was talking to a German guy yesterday who drives around Europe constantly, servicing and selling harps. He recommended I drive Beta's harp to France, since renting one would end up being prohibitively expensive.
And when I say prohibitively, that's not a word I say lightly.
Who would have thought?
That little baby.
That little kid, climbing the ladder up the big slide at the playground in Tokyo with dad behind her, scared to death and ready to catch her but acting nonchalant so she wouldn't be scared.
As recently as one week ago: a girl. Albeit strong shoulders from rowing, and a good punch, but still. And now: a woman looking out of that face.
Now: packing for half a year in France.
Until right now, until this very moment, I thought, right, France. Have a good time. But now I realize, when she comes back, everything will be different.
January 14, 2005
Spiral
Add a dimension or two to a wave pattern et voilà you got your spiral.
What is it, one or two dimensions you gotta add? You mathematicians?
Just going up and down, that's just a slightly more interesting version of stasis. But a spiral - you can be going through these cycles and developing at the same time, yeah.
It's encouraging.
Yesterday I caught myself saying, Children elsewhere in the world are so hungry they are eating grass and you're crying because we're out of chocolate pillow cereal!
It's one of the more interesting things I've said lately. A combination of sleeplessness and Gamma tend to provoke that. (It's not as good as, brush your teeth or else fish will lay eggs in your mouth and you won't be able to speak, but to be honest I wouldn't want to be that tired again, either.)
It also put her Nutella-toast into a more delicious perspective for her. She stopped crying and ate it up.
She's in a drama queen phase. Today she was upset because it was only Friday and not Saturday yet.
Also I had a dream last night, the first one I've remembered in a long time. Christina Aguilera was in it. In fact, come to think of it, it was maybe the first celebrity dream I can ever remember having. Christina was in it, as was Britney Spears and several other pop starlets and they were all naked in a hotel room and fixing to have an orgy. Christina had already started, with a mailman.
Last night I was talking to a guy about voice in writing and making contact with people. I so love the subconscious and it's versions of stuff.
January 13, 2005
So life is a disco
One nice thing about a long, solitary early-morning commute is you get to think deep thoughts like, if life is a disco and god is a dj then is life a zen disco where you experience it in a series of strobe-like individual moments, or a tao disco where it flows through you and you realize you're the flow as well?
And I'm thinking, the details will save you.
And I'm thinking, hello mojo and mojo says, hello mig and I say where were you and it says I was here all along you were just looking the wrong way and I say well I was cleaning house.
And I'm thinking, I'm a fucking genius, how could I forget. And mojo says, sure thing, pal. Or at least a conduit. And I say, quit while you're ahead okay and leave it at genius.
And I'm thinking, there could be worse fates than getting stuck in an airliner restroom with Pink (on a good day) and discussing philosophy with her. Like, Pink, are you a comedianist or a prestidigationist? Is life a joke or is it a trick?
And I'm thinking, do we have just one good idea and that has to last us our whole life, one authentic core realization, or can we have many if we but pay attention?
Cause I'm thinking, I still agree with what I said years ago about efficiency, and have little to add to it. Which is too bad, because if I could stretch it from just a rant to book length, I could call it "The Efficiency Trap" and usher in a new era of something. A new era of me having a book published, such as. Pad it with statistics or something. Graphs.
And I'm thinking Gamma wanted cereal with little chocolate pillows in it for breakfast and was really upset that we were out, because she had personally bought two whole boxes of it with mom just like ten minutes ago and now we're out how can that be? The tears one can shed over cereal. Instead I talked her into toast with Nutella and chocolate pillow cereal ASAP, I promise.
And I'm thinking, it's raining this morning, and I needed the rain.
January 12, 2005
Richard "Fucking" Gere
There he is in a full-page wristwatch advertisement, resting his chin on his hand, ear close enough to his wrist to hear the ticking of that fat, posh wristwatch strapped there as if it were a gang of Tibetan monks beating on his front door. If he's a Buddhist, isn't he supposed to live in the moment? Is he the right guy to be advertising watches?
I have a problem with the expression "live in the moment" anyway. It strikes me as like dancing in a darkened disco with a strobe light going. Living in this moment, and this moment, ad infinitum. Tick, tick, tick.
It's better, isn't it, to jump into the tao? Not to go with the flow, but to be it?
And don't forget the details. The golden flecks in his eyes, the deep blue of hers, the bloody veins in mine.
January 11, 2005
Dark, fog
Got out early this morning, driving the big one into town. Dark, with fog and had to scrape a little ice off the windshield before we left. I'd be pretending, though, if I were to write something sentimental about the drive in with her in that light, and trying to talk to her, and rounding the curve to see the sunrise over Vienna, how it's different every day. All I want to do today is throw things away and file things. Purge my life. Get rid of all these stupid distractions and these useless things that have accumulated. I'm not sentimental and I'm not nice. I am here, though, and I am paying attention.
January 10, 2005
Story problem
Question:
If it takes one person three hours (including setting up and cleanup) to paint a 2.5m X 6m changing room, and one person and two fifteen year-old girls three hours to paint the same room, how long does it take one person, two fifteen year-old girls and two fifteen year-old boys to paint it?
Answer:
About six hours, unless the kids take a lunch break after an hour or so and the person can paint like a maniac while they're gone.
Beta and her friend K. got two boys from Beta's class to help them paint the women's changing room at the rowing club. They did it like this:
Beta: Help us paint the changing room.
Boys: Okay. Will there be spiders?
Beta: Maybe. Oh, and come a day early so I'll be sure to have someone to dance with at the ball. And buy your own tickets.
Boys: Okay. You promise there will be spiders?
The kids were very good to work with. They were just normal kids, especially the boys. Beta and her friend... fifteen is a funny age. Girls are more evolved than boys at that age.
Eventually we catch up. At least I hope so.
I remember being fifteen. It's a watershed age, when boys are on a threshhold: the boys are more interested in girls than in big cellar spiders, but still feel more comfortable around the spiders.
So a lot of time was spent yesterday with girls, and a grown man, masking stuff off and taping down plastic sheeting and so on while boys poked spiders the size of pie plates and said, "hrhrhrhr".
They were great, though, all of them. Big help. They were proud of themselves when we finished, as they should be. Looks great.
You'll never guess who I bumped into out on the dance floor
That stupid joke goes through my head every time I try to dance at the ball. When I lived in the United States I avoided most physical activity requiring anything resembling coordination. I don't know whether people are more active here in Austria -- I suspect they are -- or whether it's just me trying to be more active with my kids, but I find myself doing things here that remind me painfully of my career as a consumer of the physical education dished out in the public school system of my country of birth. Same as then, if they picked teams for these things, I wouldn't get picked last, but only thanks to the halt and the lame. Skiing. Rowing. Playing cello. Ballroom dancing.
But, you do it and it doesn't kill you.
There was a big difference this year, too: I danced with my daughter. What can I say? Proud dad. Classy kid. I managed not to cry noticeably on the dance floor.
January 08, 2005
January 07, 2005
Looking for a harp in France
Beta is going to France at the end of the month. She will be staying with a family for six months, as an exchange student. We are not only excited about the usual things, we are also looking for a harp for her to borrow or rent while she is there so we don't have to ship hers from here.
Last night we were googling around trying to find something and turning up articles on Islamic law written by someone named Harpe and things like that. No idea what else we found because I don't speak French (yet: I bought a teach-yourself-French course Wednesday and started listening to the CDs in my car this morning). Overall it was a pretty funny evening, us fighting over the keyboard, the mouse, and which search terms to use and what to put in quotation marks.
If any of you have an idea where to look, or at least which search terms to use, I'd appreciate any advice.
January 05, 2005
Adventure
My life lacks adventure right now. Adventure and romance. I have this urge to sit in the woods all night and look at stuff, such as the sky, or to go explore something. Get in the car and drive around looking for neat stuff, or walk through the city. Have a romantic date with my wife or draw some pictures of her or see a stupid action movie with my kid before she leaves for half a year in France. Meet someone new and interesting. See a concert. Have an intelligent conversation. You know, adventure.
Tar
I live west of the city so I drive into the sunrise in the morning and into the sunset on my way home. Poor the people who live east of the city and have to look into their rearview mirrors to see that.
They repair the freeway with tar here, when it's just a small crack, leaving small, narrow strips of tar here and there in the lanes. The lanes are light-grey concrete or asphalt, which although you'd think asphalt was black is actually a medium to light grey all things considered, besides there is no black in nature as I have said before, and the French Impressionists back me up on this.
The strips of tar are shinier than the surrounding road. This morning they were all purple, reflecting the sunrise which was especially extravagant. Nature really outdid itself this morning.
I'm that tar, sometimes. And everything else is everything else.
January 03, 2005
It's not a diet, and yet it's not a finance plan either.
I was debating with myself whether to go out into the not-so-cold-but-windy and get something to eat at the store down the road, or to just sit in my office and be hungry and shiver because I haven't gone downstairs to reclaim my heater yet.
If you go outside, you'll be gone for twenty or thirty minutes, get some fresh air and your co-workers will get used to you being gone and leave you alone for the rest of your lunch break so you can work on that creativity project you started to dislodge your blocks, I said to myself.
But it's cold out and I'd have to stand up and put on my coat, I replied. It was an actual debate, not a metaphorical one.
Then I checked my wallet and remembered I have no money today and that ended the debate.
Now I think I'll run downstairs and steal back my heater while my co-worker is away at lunch.
Sky
I'm trying to paint.
Sky is hard to paint, for example. As is night, or the time just before sunrise. But even if you can't paint it right, at least you see it more clearly when you look at it because you're thinking about how to paint it.
And you notice things like, nothing is ever really black. It's always some color, actually. Rarely white, too.
Fire is also hard to paint. It's all like, hold still, goddammit, fire.
Sky is always changing too, but more slowly than fire unless you're being sucked up a tornado funnel. Another difference is you don't get as much opportunity to observe fire if you're lucky.
We had a good chance to observe it at new years at the house of friends when they filled the sterno receptacle under the fondue set wrong and it overflowed and was all, Flame On! and charred our pot and melted our fondue forks.
The kids loved that.
The flames were bluish green and quite transparent with darker cores and danced around.
The sky this morning was grey, but not a single grey, a multitude of greys with a bit of color over by the horizon where the sun was apparently thinking about coming up. And there were feathery bits far off and up high, perhaps rain slashing down. And a variety of clouds, from no clouds to heavy black rain clouds.
And the woods were a nice burnt sienna/ultramarine against that when I drove through the woods. The rain, you might be able to get that with a sort of wash, you know, lots of turpentine in the paint. And the branches against the sky - I'm torn over whether to paint each branch with a small brush, or sort of blur the near-black of the branches into the light grey of the sky there.
And then I round a curve near Vienna and it's like god is pulling my leg, bright orange sunrise off to the left, massive pink swatches of rain off to the right, all the elements pulled together and for a moment I'm not even trying to imagine how to paint it. And I'm not thinking about how I hurt my wife's feelings this morning or about how my one daughter is worried how things will go for her in France or how my other daughter has no "off" button.
Sometimes the only thing that saves you are the details. And I wonder how I would paint my family.
Draft reinstated
Someone here at work has started their new year off on the wrong foot with a dose of bad karma by stealing the space heater I use because space is so cold. Also my window is not well-insulated and it's drafty here. Also my radiator is anemic.
A little investigation has revealed found the culprit: one of the hot secretaries here. I am told her legs had been getting cold. So, now, the moral dilemma: let her keep the heater and I risk kidney infection and eventually dialysis three times a week, or reclaim my heater and maybe she starts wearing trousers or long skirts instead of miniskirts?
Must meditate on this.