Category
Ford
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01.28.08
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01.21.08
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01.13.08Chas-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?
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01.06.085 :: 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.
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01.05.08cabin fever
Daily, Ford, Home, Painting (7)
While the snow has enveloped most of the east coast, we here on the west coast are experiencing rain, in tides of wet sheets, throughout the final holiday weekend. Yesterday we were without power, but all systems are go today. The christmas tree inside glows steadily upon the manic face of cabin fever, who manifests itself in the form of one particular reckless imp, screaming like a V2 rocket on descent, fording (quite literally) puddles outside and back in again into the post-yule cosiness. He’s oblivious to inner sanctum, to either of us cerebral souls at guitar or computer, and instead vaults over sofas, boxes and amplifiers at breakneck speed.
There is one among us, tired of an arygle sweater, bringing the whole scene into sharp relief:
And the rain continues to pour, then abate, then weep again, the whole state of California in catharsis.
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11.09.07The Hook
Ford, Santa Cruz, The Pacific, Uncategorized (5)I made it past the breakers, beyond the brute slap of the Pacific’s arm and the ramming plunges of whitewater, onto the mammoth back of the ocean. It swells and heaves beneath me. I feel so small.
I paddle farthest out, and behind me, everyone bobs atop their boards, all in black, all watching the outside. Suddenly, floating above the emerald heft, I relax in between sets. I circle to face shore, sitting upright. My feet tangle in the slick fingers of kelp that sways in a world beneath me, a mystifying, pulsing abyss. Sea otters hump three feet from my board, unashamed, and I smile and wipe snot off my face while they cavort and roll in a large circle around me.
I swing outside again and see nothing under the white curtain of fog. But back on the shore, I watch the boys and Dwight take turns sliding on the sand, learning to skim, climbing the cliff rocks. Chas is wearing a red baseball cap. That was a good idea.
Damon, yards behind me on his big banana longboard, puts both fingers to his eyes, then one finger points outside. I turn my back. A tremendous hussy of a wave shows me her hand, and my face falls. I am sucked offshore in her slow inhale, and in the green-gray glassy shadow, where I watch the kelp reach skywards, I draw a pillowfull of air and slink off my board. That’s when the beginner follows her stomach, covers her head, and plunges round and round to the place where leashes become necklaces, surfboards rocket, and the ocean smacks a big fat bubbly sign on my forehead that reads “DUMBASS.”
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10.08.07Moffett Field
Daily, Exploring, Ford, SillyValley, Uncategorized (45)
Ford and his friend, Revan, study the model with anxious eyes, and eager fingers tap the glass and track the belts. Revan’s father is about to take us for a ride on the VFS, Vertical Flight Simulator, and five astronauts were in the sim only hours before.
The building smells like a well-oiled metal shop and the hi-gloss waxed terrazzo recalls the set of 2001; the interior hasn’t changed in thirty years. But it feels oddly comfortable to me; like the industrial white and ochre interiors of Texas A&M, where I hung out afterschool with dad, about that many years ago.
We’re in the shuttle cockpit. The boys land it at night onto an airstrip. During our visit, the mechanics work downstairs on one of the elevator motors, so we have to imagine the horrific vertigo; the boys crash five times before landing correctly. Still, I find myself covering Chas’ eyes as the tarmac lights swallow the shuttle, and all is then black.
The kids laugh and touch every archaic steel switch on the console, poring over the data screen, trying to make sense of the complex code of numbers and letters, and I, scanning the code with them, get a sense of what they’ve been going through this year, as they have slowly begun to string letters together to form words, and understand the translation of larger numbers, how to scan linear strings of data. Folds upon growing folds of intelligence, carried by wild chariots of grubby abandon, tell us everything without words; wonder behind the flood of simian awe.
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10.02.07mandalarama
Daily, Ford, Sketchbook, Young @ Art (1)Ford picks a pen and sits quietly at the table beside me. It’s so warm and sunny on our backs. I look over to see what he’s working on, and no surprise, it’s another mandala. It’s hard not to smile and approve him while he’s at work, but I do it anyway. I love his current obsession. As he draws upon a piece of previously-used typing paper, I reach from my corner of the table and pass him a small pocket-sized moleskine. “Here,” I nudge him. “You need a sketchbook for those.” And he has one of those grins that stretches from ear to ear, a really infectious smile, which rings melodious to “Thanks, Mama!”
Later, I catch him at the kitchen table before lunch, doodling away again
And I think to myself, this is so perfect and right, this meticulous new phase of his. I love the geometry, I love the patience, and the infatuation with such a universal, timeless thing.
But he’s also into school mode, which means he’ used to busywork already. I caught him copying some fleurydoodles I’d been scribbling in the studio, after he’d sat down beside me later.
He then challenged me to a duel. “Ok, you have to copy whatever I do, allright?”
Ok.
Which proved difficult.
I had to try about 4 times to replicate his design correctly. Instructing me to start over, I’d have to repeat the whole, “First, morning glories, then connect them, then three leaf stalks, then a stalk of wheat,” etc. Four times! I’d get three steps or so into each drawing and become completely self-absorbed, adding frilly tendrils and black-eyed susan vines…I think this copy was most accurate.
Still, he got completely frustrated with me and wound up storming off into the other room before I finished. He’s not a natural teacher, these days, and it has me wondering who he might be emulating.
That’s the thing about school; I can’t be a fly on the wall every day, so I’m left wondering who might be misdirecting him in my absence. Or maybe he’s just the perfectionist I see, slowly coming into focus.One thing is certain: his obsession is rubbing off on me….
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09.28.07
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09.27.07
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