Leonard Cohen has ambled off this mortal coil after a long Earthly existence. My friend Donna Sue Atkins introduced me to his musical performance many years ago, cueing up “Suzanne” and saying that Cohen’s banter in one concert included, “I’ve now depressed several generations . . .” I am grateful for his insights and emotional tapestries. His tortured voice will be missed.
Today is a double-barreled Two For One lesson. It is Spanish and Drawing, and it is A Letter and An Illustration.
First I wrote my teacher (mi maestra) the best letter I could with the meager Spanish I know already. The one word I guessed at, I guessed wrong, and she corrected it.
While I drew and got words I demonstrated drawing technique to Maggie, so she got a lesson too. That’s the deal we have.
My friend Suz Dykes took a break from Facebook because of the political nastiness–then came back today of all days. I promised her some light and/or fluffy and/or inspirational stuff. Hope you like this, Suz!
boy and cat and dream
the boy has a cat on his shoulder
the cat has a dream in her head
the dream is of warmth to enfold her:
a boulder in sun as her bed.
the dream snaps as shut as a locket
the cat feels the boy stroke her fur
the boy has a treat in his pocket:
unsocketed catnip–she’ll purr.
LaShawna is gracious, wise, charismatic, patient yet able to invoke urgency when need be, a warm and eloquent conversationalist, gentle by nature yet tough as nails when a situation warrants it. I wish my drawing did her justice. She looks like her soul. Not all of us do.
She worked her way up to management from the ground up, starting as a cook. As with all managers at SSP I have worked for, she is capable of filling in in any capacity, and does so at the drop of a hat. She leads by example.
And she Lives, and Laughs, and Loves. She lives fully. She laughs richly. The love in her heart overflows for her family.
I am glad to know her, and always glad to see her. I’m grateful for her wisdom and kindness. I wish her the success she so deserves.
Here is a drawing I made for the Venezuelan lady who is teaching me Spanish.
Here is the lesson for today.
This morning when the five o’clock alarm chimed I was mostly awake. My hands, relatively unarthritic before summer began, ached and were stiff. My right index finger did its spring-loaded trick: it unfurls a bit, catches, and then with additional force switchblades into straightness.
I don’t want to be one of those old people who focuses on his infirmities. It will take vigilance: today I do.
mold age
many elders are at sea
oleo or e f g
dimmer mort conturbs at me
“Gary, my hero,” said the wonderful Inez right after she saw my portrait of Gwen,”I want you to do one of me.” Flattery got her everywhere. I did, and this is it.
Inez is good people. She is the salt of the earth. She has seen it all and lived to tell the tale. And she was one of the ones who escorted me from the TSA security checkpoint, outside the Terminal 4 B Gates, to our restaurant, Matt’s Big Breakfast, in those long-ago days before the airport deemed me trustworthy enough to issue me a badge. (I just got my second badge renewal–looks like they haven’t found out what an unsavory character I am yet.)
I am guessing we live fairly close to each other, since we once rode the 32nd Street Southbound bus together early one Sunday morning, and once I was walking out of the same McDonald’s she was driving through. That’s good. She can be my neighbor anytime. She’s a Sweetheart.
This may or may not be the dawning of the age of Aquarius. It is definitely the dawning of the age of hand-held, approximated reality. Most of us in the United States of America now possess a device that is our interface with the Universe. As the middleman, the device imposes an operating system, a navigational device, and various profit-motivated, unasked-for obstacles between us and what we are rubbing this Aladdin’s Lamp to obtain.
My drawing is an approximation of what this is like. It is a CRUDE approximation. It includes at upper right an approximation of a hand-held, almost out of format range a la Breughel. Breughel once depicted “Landscape with the Fall of Icarus” by putting a large ship in a large sea in the midground, and a hard-to-see Icarus impacting the sea in front of the ship, with only his legs visible.
I hope we will learn to use this device, and those that follow it, more than the device learns to use us. I am trying to go unplugged more. Figure out how much time you spend staring into that insidious screen, and you may well join me . . .
Inktober is over, but it would be a mistake to get out of inking practice. Thus this trifle, a semi-obvious pun with a little serendipity in that an anatomical drawing and a bit of faked musical notation counterpoint each other harmoniously.
It is good to learn the heart. Like a city, the heart does not make sense without its inlets and outlets. That goes for the metaphorical heart as well. ❤
In my lonelier moments I nO evoM, which is Move On backwards. I UNmove on. Backtrack. Grind my teeth over how I cannot unturn events, cannot Revert To Saved Version.
I was in such a dysfunctional mode this morning, and so I gave myself the illustrator’s version of a good talking-to. Good PENCILING-to? Sounds painful. –Hey, it was, a little. But it may have done the job.
Here is the acrostic:
pass your past
poetry‘s my s.o.p
andy hopfrog told his flea
schmaltzy, lurid odes engross
some poor bastards NEED a ghost
S.O.P. stands for Standard Operating Procedure. Why a Hopfrog talking to a Flea that belongs to him? Metaphor for a dilettante with a Jiminy Cricket. Why is [told] in brackets? Alternate close words like toed, toad and towed offer different flavors. Who’s the Asian babe and the old guy? The heart of the page, that’s who.
One with Clay, Image and Text 