Chas

02.21.08

Ford blogs: Japanese Tea Garden
Chas, Daily, Ford blogs (1)

Yesterday we went to the Japanese Tea Garden in San Francisco and we got tea.. It was Japanese tea, no, Jasmine tea. It tasted kinda good.

A lady with a pink dress, a kimono, with birds on it, gave it to us.

Mom look at me. Mom, look.
Mom, look at me!

…And we had treats: cookies.

Then we went for a walk where the pond was and we saw some fish. They were koi fish. They were white and orange and big.

The garden looked like a big giant map thing, like a circle, with bridges that had no rails whatsoever. And stepping stones! That was really fun for me.

We walked under a big red castle tower thing.
But we got cold.

And I had to go to the bathroom.
But we went to the gift store. I got a Japanese paintbrush kit.

I chose that ’cause it’s kinda cool to me. I like Japanese characters and it had those and some pictures on it. Now I want to paint with it. Period.
02.13.08

30 days in the treehouse, day 1
30 Days in the Treehouse, Chas, Daily, Listening, Nature, Seeing (2)

30 days in the treehouse, day 1, originally uploaded by young@art.

The 30 Day Sit Spot Challenge begins on Friday. Chas and I will be spending our normal quiet time every day out in the treehouse next month. It will be our time to sit quietly and watch spring unfold.

We swept off the brown olive leaves that covered the floor and sat down for peanut butter sandwiches. Within a couple of minutes we were surrounded by a group of chatty titmice and towhees, who dangled from thin, bobbing branches of the acacia tree beside the structure. Not surprisingly, the hummingbirds were fighting somewhere in the orchard, never in one place for very long.
02.11.08

Mustard & Relish
Chas, Daily, Photos (4)

My brand spankin new camera is in the shop. For 6 more weeks. Time to keep playing with the old one! Challenge of the day: Take a picture of Chas in the mustard in the middle of a bright sunshiney day. Can she do it? Did I. I LOVE this picture! Say what you want, but this picture makes me SO happy! It feels hot and cold at the same time, just like spring sunshine on sleepy skin. It will help me remember the mustard in a few weeks, once it’s gone. LOOK at those grubby fingernails! And I froze the moment when Chas handed me two deadheaded mustard blooms, just because. Just because!
01.29.08

more fronts & fungi
Chas, Daily, Exploring, Ford, Home, SillyValley, Young @ Art (5)

Sillyvalley was scoured clean again by another front and today, awestruck, we were witness to some kind of crazy glorious spectacle of snow-capped mountains atop the massive bowl of San Jose, all purple and crytallized behind the field outside the kitchen window, which is, for its part, cloaked in a riot of yellow mustard. I just didn’t know what to do with myself, standing there in the playground after school, staring at the immaculate horizon.

Then, as with all cold fronts, the sky started weeping. Under a rainbow we walked home and decided to hunt for mushrooms in the backyard under the oak canopy, savoring the last bit of afternoon light, regardless of the rain.

And what do you know? The rain stopped just long enough.

We gathered a handful of mushrooms, no idea what kind yet, just for something to draw or paint while I started a pot roast. I set a pan of opaque watercolors out on the table and gave a quick basidio-lesson and painting tutorial. They did all the rest.

Ford picked up a paintbrush:

And Chas got sleepy.
01.28.08

shhh
Chas, Daily, Damon, Ford (6)
01.21.08

Chas, Ford (0)
01.13.08

Chas-ing the Rain
Chas, Daily, Damon, Exploring, Ford, Santa Cruz (0)

With all the rain we have had in the past couple of weeks, the time is ripe for mushroom hunting. Coinciding with this annual fruiting season is the smattering of fungal swapmeets, and today was the second day of one such fair; this time in Santa Cruz. Jerry, who we have known since dotcom daze, drove down from Berkeley to escort us to the fair; were it not for him, we may have never left the house this weekend, as overcome as I am with molten wax bliss and the sound of Damon and his jazz guitar scales in the living room. Chas, for his part, would have never remembered how badly he wanted psychotropics.

From the get go we recognized his discriminating faculties, glancing around the rooms for a little something beyond cuisine grade mushrooms

Finally, he began anxiously inquiring of strangers, like a foreign traveller looking for his stolen wallet, “Where are the poisonous mushrooms? Do you have any poisonous mushrooms?”

To distract him, we ushered Chas to the kiddie room, where we were greeted by a happy pack of breeding hippies and their rosy-cheeked hobbit spawn, merrily dancing around the craft tables and painting colorful paper fruiting bodies.

We were lured like flies back into the common area, where a group of chefs had inadvertently contaminated the breathing air with the most rank, malodorous brew of rotten mushroom stew or something of that nature (there’s no way my mind could positively translate the smell into words, my limbic system was so busy grappling with the extraordinary shock of it). On the surface, everything looked so gourmet, but inside, they were cooking Satan’s athelete’s foot.

We had to split; Damon took the boys outside to the playground while Jerry taught me some basic taxonomy. The room was buzzing with woodsy nerds, all shuffling around the exhibits, crouching down, clicking their camerafones. I learned that I could probably eat one half of a cap from a Fly Agaric and still be okay.

And how to differentiate between a tasty chanterelle and a toxic false chanterelle (the real one has ridges and folds–not gills).

Jerry told me I passed up a perfectly good Bolete, after I described to him what I jogged by on Thursday. They are, apparently, quite tasty. Have you ever tried one? Have you ever eaten wild mushrooms? Would you try? Would you eat this man’s wild mushroom lasagna if he brought it to your potluck?
01.10.08

Pet Cemetery
Chas, Daily, Exploring, Photos (0)
01.06.08

5 :: thicket
Chas, Daily, Ford, Painting, Seti (8)

It is a cool, damp, pristine Sunday morning, and we are in between rainspells. I stand in the open doorway, facing the garden out front, to finish a cup of rapidly-cooling coffee. My hoodie is in full operation, tucked beneath goosedown and pulled up over my head. The birds are going crazy in the Moneterey pine out back, some sort of starling gang sqwawking like Cantonese peddlers; the robins declaring spring on the clover, titmice hanging upside-down and talking, apparently, to themselves…in the oleander? I carry the empty glass mug by my side, out onto the footpath and start deadheading the frigid, rainpounded pansies and violas.

Before long, the honeyed beeswax scent catches up to me, and I’m quite distracted now, so Sunday-morning-giddy to hang out in the studio by myself, and I wipe my feet, set down the mug, and walk into the warm studio. Everything has melted in the tuna cans, by now: all the reds, brewing in a cluster; the turquoise in the corner; an array of brushes stand like swimmers for the next heat, poised and all facing me.

I take a wood panel and layer on color, in no particular order, but dictated by mental limbus. I can’t possibly stay away from the reds and the chalky turquoise. I don’t know why. And there they go, irreverently, in patches of relief on the woodgrain. That groove sets in, you know, where the cortex falls asleep and your body follows instinct, and your face relaxes, and your eyes no longer see but transmit data to your soul, regardless of judgement or analysis. That’s where I am when the kids wander into the room.

I love these kids, and I’ve mentioned that I willingly share this space with them, but I know that you know that I know this is craziness for a person in this current mindset of mine to accept, and I all but groan and whine when Ford comes up to me and tells me he wants to paint with wax. Right now?
And so does Chas.

So. Behind his back, my brows cleave a furrow into my skull and I bite my lip. Sure, hang on. And he volunteers to use one of the panels from my stack of freshly-sawed plywood, the one my husband just dropped off on my desk, straight off the tablesaw. They’re still warm from the energy of being cut. He is holding a plywood square and standing before me. For a second, that selfish ass of me stands there, all pissy and annoyed, until my cortical brain emerges from deep sleep, probably high on particulates and formaldehyde effluvium, and lays a hand on the situation.

That’s so awesome! You’re going to paint with me? You rock. Wax is so much fun. Let’s open some more windows, ok?

And meanwhile, as I start scribing into the wax, somehow returning to the groove despite my mania, I look down to find Chas adorning Seti in wrapping ribbon. As if the preppy sweater wasn’t adequately humiliating.

We worked, in this manner, for about a half hour; shuffling around each other like moving puzzle pieces among the clutter. Finally, the rain commenced, and I lost the boys to the outdoors, where they ran circles around the sundial, in the middle of the lawn, trying to drink the rain in mid-orbit. The thing is, I’ll lose them, soon enough, to many other things. That’s what I’m trying to remind that harpy ego of mine, when she’s about to snap at these little dudes. It’s all good, it’s all fun. I can’t believe I even harbor her within me, but nobody, no parent, is perfect.
01.03.08

Strawberries in January
Chas, Daily, Painting (1)

It’s oddly unseasonal.

We have strawberries growing in a pot beside the front door.

Chas has diligently plucked each one before it has blushed. But he missed one. I stole it and now it’s rotting on my studio tabletop. Maybe he’ll find it tomorrow when he raids the studio behind my back. He hasn’t done that in a while and there’s a whole pile of pillageable organized disorder, ripe for rape.

The other day, I found stabs and streaks from a dollmaking needle in a lovely unmarked portion of one of my paintings that I’d set out to cure. Chas was experimenting with intaglio. On top of my painting. So you can imagine my inner conflict, the inner art teacher catfighting the inner artist. Ack! Headache.

Sharing a studio is more intuitive to me than, say, deadbolting the door when I leave the room. I can’t bring myself to exclude them from that space any more than I can keep them out of the kitchen. There are certain illicit corners of the studio (you know, the cadmiums and cobalts, the guerilla art shelf with all the spray paint cans) that they will one day access through rite of passage, but for now are safe beyond reach. But we spend a few minutes each week together, putting things back in their own homes.

Growing up as a parent has helped me to learn to leggo my ego. If you’re a parent, wouldn’t you aggree?

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