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Seeing

• 07.14.06
  The Quilts of Gees Bend: The Soul of the Quilt
  Daily, Exploring, Seeing, Thinking (9)

  I arrive in Houston at six o’clock, scarf down a plate of italian sausage and spaghetti and my parent’s house, and escort mom to the Gees Bend exhibit at the MFAH. We have an hour before the museum closes and I get momenntarily lost navigating my way to the museum’s new addition, through the same corridors I used to browse with a trail of small children in my teaching days at the Glassell School, across the street. It’s embarrassing and I smile to an Asian security guard who doesn’t seem to remember me this time.

  The glossy terrazzo floor reflects little observational discussions, the tapping of fancy shoes and the muted cast of each bold, vibrant quilt in this collection. And boy, are they something. If the colors and assymetry of the quilts don’t immediately make you smile, look closer.

  If you have a sensitive conscience, then you have questioned the way we live today: the overlooked luxury in each car parked in the driveway and the way you can choose your way each day, the piles of fashion magazines and the excess clothes, garages filled so full of crap because the house is spilling over and space is limited– this is the typical American family way of life (not that I am the exception) and this is a way of life that starves people of happiness and groundedness and peace. I think about this a lot and was brought to tears when I listened to an interview with one of the quilters as I scrutinized a soulful patch of denim in a quilt, a piece taken from a pair of worn-out blue jeans, that included the dark blue ghost of a pocket, the reminder of the fabric’s former life. I wanted to run my hands along the seams, feeling the backbone of handiwork and sweat and conversation that birthed these colorful objects. I cradled the idea of reuse, inspiring the happy purist in me.

  I thought about the stiff smell of rows upon rows of fabric bolts, the angst of shopping for the perfect hue, specialty scissors and quilting stores with basketfuls of fat quarters in every imaginable print: cats drinking milk, cats dancing, cats pouring milk, cats stargazing, cats chasing balls of yarn, cats chasing mice, cats napping, cats making me dizzy with a cascade of possibilities, for some reason(pardon me if cats are your thing–and I still think cats are cool). I thought about my own sleeping, shelved monster of a fabric stash. I thought of the closetful of clothes in my bedroom that I will never wear again but refuse to give away, holding them for some special deconstruction but not finding the time just yet. And so they sit there, looking stale. And smelling about the same. I think I vowed right there to boycott the purchase of any more fabric from a store or supplier for a good, long time–at least until I can manage to recruit much of what I already have. You know the old adage, Waste Not, Want Not. I mean, I value the use of new fabric for projects (and man, can some of you SEW!) but for now, I will value myself more if I downsize.

  
  Plummer Pettway 1918-1993 “Roman Stripes, variation (local name: “Crazy” Quilt) cotton twill, denim, cotton/ polyester blend, synthetic knit (pants matieral), 86 x 70 inches.

  These isolated women had only the outgrown and worn-out clothes and bolts of local fabric (I think Sears once gave them bolts of the avocado fabric that shows up in nearly one hundred of the collection’s quilts). One of the quilters, in the interview I was listening to, struggled as she tried to convey what it was like not to have much of anything to work with. Work shirts, blue jeans, feed sacks–nothing was wasted. Nothing.

  I smiled to read little excerpts about the children, sitting on the front porch beneath the quilting table, watching the needle poke through the underside of the quilt. I told Ford about the way the children (who became the artists of these quilts) picked up scraps of fabric that had fallen to the floor and began making little quilts of their own, right there on the floor. “We didn’t have much, but we was happy” echoed similarly among them. And I still get tears to remember one woman share her surprise in knowing that someone else besides herself appreciates them, not to mention put them up on a wall.

  
  Missouri Pettway, 1902-1981. Blocks and strips work-clothes quilt, 1942, cotton, corduroy, cotton sacking material, 90 x 69 inches. Missouri’s daughter Arlonzia describes the quilt: “It was when Daddy died. I was about seventeen, eighteen. He stayed sick about eight months and passed on. Mama say, ‘I going to take his work clothes, shape them into a quilt to remember him, and cover up under it for love.’ She take his old pants legs and shirttails, take all the clothes he had, just enough to make that quilt, ahd I helped her tore them up. Bottom of the pants is narrow, top is wide, and she had me to cutting the top part out and to shape them up in even strips.” –both quilt images from Auburn Universitys: Quilts of Gees Bend in Context’s website.

  
  
• 04.28.06
  Spring Sprang
  Daily, Seeing, Sketchbook, Thinking (2)

  Spring covered up what stood bare months before. Under a moonlit sky, dark circles drape the lawn and driveway like velvet blankets, shadows under the unfurled crepe myrtle and ornamental plum. I whack my head in the night’s shade on a low branch that is heavy with young foliage, and walk out, cursing, to my car.

  Layer upon layer, Spring spackles up the landscape where Winter fails to slough. Years pass. The prickly pear cactus has budded and bloomed into an agglomeration of ovals, a colony. Little green pup ears stand atop careworn gray sections, each pup is topped with a flaming yellow flower.

  There is some serious primping going on.

  

  Night sounds have multiplied. The mockingbird’s soliloquy rambles like a long ribbon across the tapestry of night music, over the tiny drone of crickets and the clicking of bats. Sometimes the Chuck Will’s Widows interrupt the peace with their harrowing calls, hammering from cavernous throats. White Wing dove keep cooing after hours, still love-drunk.

  Day sounds too, they have bustled out of bounds. It’s a denser panorama, a flourishing of things everywhere: the chortling of swallows and Purple Martins, hissing wrens, bossy jays. After a rain, the Cardinal leads the symphony with its intense love song. Focused, the calls are sculpted, intricate and metered like gingerbread on a Victorian cottage. And while most female birds silently acknowledge their mate’s serendades, the female cardinal responds clearly, without upstaging her man.

  While she broods, I watch the male gently stuff her mouth with little morsels. I wonder if it’s appealing to her, what he’s brought to the table. Does she even care? Before Chas was born, I requested sushi and beer to be delivered bedside after his arrival. Instead, we shared a bag of cold Egg McMuffins. I guess we get whatever’s available in the wild, or at 5am in the hospital.

  …You know, he still could have filled that order later that evening, or the next day, damnit. But I never got the damned dinner I asked for. And that’s where I differ from the cardinal…
  ….I totally forgot where I was going with this.

  
  
• 04.21.06
  Over the Weather
  Austin, Daily, Exploring, Running, Seeing (2099)

  I watched the kid’s sunhats bob and spin in the Twinner this morning as I pushed them up and down the neighborhood hills. Left and right, the wildflowers! Everywhere, embroidering the landscape with color. Like butterflies, we stopped at every honeysuckle to sample the sugar; Ford wouldn’t let a single vine pass unplucked. Australian cowdogs bounded to greet us, licking sunscreen off our hands, as we walked under the arching necks of blooming yuccas, a mature hedge that bordered their yard.

  We spent another day at home, but mostly outdoors: pruning trees, training vines, repotting, chasing black bear caterpillars across pavement. In the middle of the day, we watched the storm pass in green darkness, spraying a horizontal rain and dropping hail between the boards of our patio the size of small grapes. Then the sky opened like a vault, and I got a wild hair to drive the kids down to the lake, where I waded into the water with a hand cultivator and a pickle jar, collecting aquatic plants.
  I thought it would make the betta happy.

  But we survived the last day of the flu: grimacing with every cough that blew my way; washing, washing, washing; spicy seafood soup with lemongrass and mushrooms from the Thai restaurant down the road; iced tea in mason jars with fresh spearmint; bundling up into the down comforter to watch Godzilla movies with Ford in blue twilight. His hair is thicker, no longer baby-like. I’m finding it difficult to snuggle with him, he has grown lean and long.

  I laid there, in the rain, remembering cocooning like this in the Airstream. With Ford I would snuggle up in the same comforter, womblike and warm, under the air-conditioning’s permafrost. We’d lay there, wrapped in down and encircled with window: we’d curl up and watch the water crash on the rugged Kennebunkport coastline, or tractors plow by, or passersby swoon at our silver bullet bling.

  I ran through the neighborhood again, backtracking alone. This time, to the stopwatch. I started out pounding but eventually glided, like I was pedalling up and down the hills. I have retrained my upper body to assist, my legs to reach higher. My eyes followed the powerlines, where birds were busy preening in peace: cardinals, mourning doves, Whitewing doves, Scrub jays, cowbirds. Above them swooped chimney swifts, and the whole lot of them were in song. A four-foot cedar stump jumped out at me from the bushes, black and damp. I never noticed it this morning, but I imagine it was bone dry and pale, then. But that’s the bunny in the magician’s hat, why I stayed to watch the show and left my gym bag in the car, only two inches further out the driveway.

  
  
• 04.04.06
  While My Battery Was Dead
  Austin, Chas, Daily, Exploring, Ford, Seeing (2)

  I just got a new battery for my Powerbook. Damon stood in line for service while Ford played a video game. I stood over Chas while he stood bouncing on one of the black ball-shaped seats at the kiddie table.

  Friday morning we took a hike along the creek. We chased a young bullfrog, who teased us along a stretch of cattails at the bank before disappearing into some brown muck. Ford was so eager to catch him, standing there with his little plastic red bucket. Chas only wanted to shout and jump into the water. We had to retreat into the woods to keep everyone safe.

  

  I stopped to inspect the mustang grapes, and Chas disappeared. I felt my heart in my thighs ten seconds later, when he reappeared uphill about thirty yards; he had found a loop and had come round to surprise us. Mind you, we were walking along a twenty-foot precipice that overlooked the creek.
  
  

  Chas is a bushwhacker, both on and off the trail. We put him point blank, while Ford trailed behind, scouting for honeysuckle. He managed to find four blossoms, and gingerly dissect them for the four drops of nectar among them.

  
  
  On saturday, we biked along the lake. Though the landscape is vibrant and the wildflowers are in bloom, people were the life force along the lake, running, canoeing, parading, strolling. Winding through the trees, we trailered the boys and their havoc, like a small zoo train with a cage of crackhead chimpanzees. I wore a constant smile; for one thing, I wasn’t the one hauling the trailer, and for another: it really does sound cute. Despite the mayhem, I like robust, vibrant kids and my kids are anything but reserved.

  Some jocks were playing kayak polo under the MoPac bridge, the ball barely clearing the beams beneath me as we rode over them. A Pug meetup and show along the waterfront, one was wearing a pink tutu. A birthday party for a resident goose. The swallows are back. Wisteria and Chinaberry blossoms made the air heady and seductive. I am in love with Austin.

  Dinner with friends Saturday night at a neighborhood dig, margherita pizza under the oaks with good wine while the kids scrambled on the lawn and playground. A two-man blues band played in an alcove on the patio. Sunday morning completely disoriented me. The blazing heat, with the loss of an hour, drove me straight into summer. Jogging through our barely-rural neighborhood, grasshoppers zirred past me across the blacktop. The only thing to ground me in April was the fresh, green terrain, littered with half dollar-sized white flowers; everyone’s yard looked like a driving range. Wooly bear caterpillars marched across the road, and a brown tarantula stood paralyzed as I passed it on the curb.

  
  
• 03.31.06
  
  Austin, Daily, Seeing (3)

  
  
  Happy chartreuse puffs have appeared among the evergreens here. Oaks and mesquite are leafing out in between cedars. They look hopeful now, but won’t take long to mature. The little, tender green leaves shine in the sun, denying that they are part of the dense, gnarly, scrubby chaparral.

  I take ginger steps along the riparian trail behind the gym. After yoga, it’s good to be outside breathing fresh air, untainted by foot odor and old sweat. The cedar I walk on cuts the grime like a blade, cleansing me. It reminds me of the barn in the morning, fresh shavings cascading out of my wheelbarrow and onto the floor of the stall. In a split second I dodge after noticing a hanging inchworm. My feet reach high over little mounds where squirrels have dug into the mulch, I plod faster. Five shiny, tall brown mushrooms have erupted overnight. The basidiocarps are covered in a cheesy white film, like little newborn babies. I dodge another caterpillar. The creek is flowing steady, after a good rain. Wrens are on alert, surely happy with all the worms. One darts across the path just before me, and disappears into the shadows.

  When I have finished my stretching routine on the mat, upstairs in the gym, I look down on my white shirt to notice an aberration: a bright green inchworm with a shiny black head is trying to navigate across my belly. Without thinking, I take my shirt and slingshot it across the room, towards the Cybex machines. Old habits die hard; at least I didn’t squash it.

  It’s midnight. I nearly fell asleep at nine but Damon arrived at the bedside with a Coke float. It was delicious, like the ones we sipped in the middle of summer twenty-odd years ago. I remember laughing, in between foamy sips, while watching John MacEnroe chew out the referee during Wimbledon against Jimmy Connors. I was glad for Wimbledon, during siesta time in Beaumont, when the sun shone too hot at midafternoon to hunt for lizards or ride bikes.

  A sure sign of the season, a few loony White Wing doves are cooing outside the window. At midnight.

  
  
• 03.31.06
  
  Austin, Daily, Seeing (0)

  
  
  Happy chartreuse puffs have appeared among the evergreens here. Oaks and mesquite are leafing out in between cedars. They look hopeful now, but won’t take long to mature. The little, tender green leaves shine in the sun, denying that they are part of the dense, gnarly, scrubby chaparral.

  I take ginger steps along the riparian trail behind the gym. After yoga, it’s good to be outside breathing fresh air, untainted by foot odor and old sweat. The cedar I walk on cuts the grime like a blade, cleansing me. It reminds me of the barn in the morning, fresh shavings cascading out of my wheelbarrow and onto the floor of the stall. In a split second I dodge after noticing a hanging inchworm. My feet reach high over little mounds where squirrels have dug into the mulch, I plod faster. Five shiny, tall brown mushrooms have erupted overnight. The basidiocarps are covered in a cheesy white film, like little newborn babies. I dodge another caterpillar. The creek is flowing steady, after a good rain. Wrens are on alert, surely happy with all the worms. One darts across the path just before me, and disappears into the shadows.

  When I have finished my stretching routine on the mat, upstairs in the gym, I look down on my white shirt to notice an aberration: a bright green inchworm with a shiny black head is trying to navigate across my belly. Without thinking, I take my shirt and slingshot it across the room, towards the Cybex machines. Old habits die hard; at least I didn’t squash it.

  It’s midnight. I nearly fell asleep at nine but Damon arrived at the bedside with a Coke float. It was delicious, like the ones we sipped in the middle of summer twenty-odd years ago. I remember laughing, in between foamy sips, while watching John MacEnroe chew out the referee during Wimbledon against Jimmy Connors. I was glad for Wimbledon, during siesta time in Beaumont, when the sun shone too hot at midafternoon to hunt for lizards or ride bikes.

  A sure sign of the season, a few loony White Wing doves are cooing outside the window. At midnight.

  
  
• 03.31.06
  
  Austin, Daily, Seeing (0)

  
  
  Happy chartreuse puffs have appeared among the evergreens here. Oaks and mesquite are leafing out in between cedars. They look hopeful now, but won’t take long to mature. The little, tender green leaves shine in the sun, denying that they are part of the dense, gnarly, scrubby chaparral.

  I take ginger steps along the riparian trail behind the gym. After yoga, it’s good to be outside breathing fresh air, untainted by foot odor and old sweat. The cedar I walk on cuts the grime like a blade, cleansing me. It reminds me of the barn in the morning, fresh shavings cascading out of my wheelbarrow and onto the floor of the stall. In a split second I dodge after noticing a hanging inchworm. My feet reach high over little mounds where squirrels have dug into the mulch, I plod faster. Five shiny, tall brown mushrooms have erupted overnight. The basidiocarps are covered in a cheesy white film, like little newborn babies. I dodge another caterpillar. The creek is flowing steady, after a good rain. Wrens are on alert, surely happy with all the worms. One darts across the path just before me, and disappears into the shadows.

  When I have finished my stretching routine on the mat, upstairs in the gym, I look down on my white shirt to notice an aberration: a bright green inchworm with a shiny black head is trying to navigate across my belly. Without thinking, I take my shirt and slingshot it across the room, towards the Cybex machines. Old habits die hard; at least I didn’t squash it.

  It’s midnight. I nearly fell asleep at nine but Damon arrived at the bedside with a Coke float. It was delicious, like the ones we sipped in the middle of summer twenty-odd years ago. I remember laughing, in between foamy sips, while watching John MacEnroe chew out the referee during Wimbledon against Jimmy Connors. I was glad for Wimbledon, during siesta time in Beaumont, when the sun shone too hot at midafternoon to hunt for lizards or ride bikes.

  A sure sign of the season, a few loony White Wing doves are cooing outside the window. At midnight.

  
  
• 03.28.06
  The Litter on the Lawn
  Austin, Daily, Photos, Seeing (6)

  

  
  
• 02.27.06
  doggerel bantering in the clover
  Daily, Seeing (2)

  I think my days have compressed. We joined a gym nearby, where a friend of mine teaches yoga, and I’ve found myself going there in the evenings on a daily basis. This, in itself, is a good thing. But it cuts into my writing time. Fortunately, however, we still find time to paint.
  
  We rode down to the lake today. There were hints that March winds were about to blow, that it was on the horizon. I brought a crinkly nylon kite and let Ford have his first go at flying solo. But his eyes were reddish, and snot dangled from his nose, quivering in the breeze. I didn’t have kleenex, so my shirt sufficed. Dogs galloped in arcs around us, hollow barks ran through the canyon. I discovered that my children have become afraid of dogs since we sent ours to grandma. Ford cried when a yellow lab pup jumped up and licked him, bumping Ford’s lip and making it bleed. Then there was bloody drool dangling in the breeze, suspended, as Chas shrieked like an alarmed chimpanzee.
  
  
  Clover is everywhere. The sweet smell reminds me of baseball and bee stings, afternoons napping in the sunny infirmary with a swollen hand resting on my chest.
  

  
  
• 02.13.06
  Surreal
  Daily, Exploring, Photos, Seeing (4)

  I return to the exhibit on impulse, after viewing the installation of Eva Hess’ drawings. I know the corridors by heart: the oak floors creak in the east wing, but enough to surprise me every time; I am always arrested in front of the Ernst frottages, three paces north and an immediate left lead to the painting of the pipe, Leger on the diagonal wall across the room. This time, there is something different (after all, things usually change after ten years). An alcove off the Surrealism exhibit with its own security guard outside.

  It’s like walking into a jazzy vacuum chamber. A dark room, painted blue the color of Chas’ eyes, the sky on a full moon. It is a wonder-room filled with tribal masks, katchinas, headdresses and totems. In the center, a sculpture of a human being, with pins radiating from all surfaces. The opposite wall, above my head, hangs a charming sculpture of a man riding a whale, the two of them casting animated shadows on the wall. It is a collection, tribal and oceanic, curious and natural. Things collected by the Surreallists. I stand in this dark room, awestruck, wondering why this feels like home.

  In a corner I notice Dominique De Menil’s provincial desk, filled with ephemera: keys, marbles, blue butterflies, feathers, coins, seashells, buttons. “For the children who visited her home.” It’s a Darwinian duplicate of my dad’s roll-top desk. I stand in front of the desk for a good five minutes, examining treasure. Wealthy couples circulate in camel coats and leather shoes, fresh out of the box. The men are distinguished and chiselled, the women have long, glossy hair and everyone smells of ambigously scented soaps. They speak softly of travels to Fiji, and smile at certain masks. They feel at home, too.

  I exit the museum onto the wide open expanse of green lawn and sunshine. Down the block, behind a rambling old white oak tree, the boys run circles around Damon. As he waves at me from the void between branches, Chas stumbles onto the grass. Ford is laughing, calling me. I take the children into my charge and urge Damon to go see for himself. We are playing gallery tennis, allowing the kids to be kids while we struggle to be grownups.