time has become meaningless

we had an early cold snap here. followed by unseasonably warm weather. then several inches of snow. and now almost 50 degrees at the end of november. i used to be able to keep track of the passing of time by the steady and predictable march of our northern seasons. but they are now less easy to read. the leaves on my maple tree this year died on the branch, still green. the forest floor looks different now with all the green leaves among the russets, browns, and yellows. eight months of quarantine have added even more to the current disorientation. days blur into weeks into months. and now even the seasons blur. hurry up 2021. i’m lost.

it’s all in the details

this is one of those images that kills me that i can’t publish in high resolution. the delicate structures of the lichen are foreign and mesmerizing. i tried doing a tight crop on a few of the particularly photogenic blooms, but the full page bleed with hardly any white space (i call it breathing room) just didn’t feel like STILL to me. so i encourage you to zoom in on your screen, and take a walk through this other-worldly landscape at your own pace. maybe i’ll bump into you, i plan to hike over by that ochre bloom in the upper left–the one with the two large overlapping mesas. i think the view from the top could be spectacular.

lichen covered oak limbs

in my own orbit

today is thanksgiving, which exists in calendar-time, and which we will celebrate. but i find i run increasingly on a different time plane. i think of it as STILL time. it is something both daily and seasonal. weekends do not exist in STILL time. nor really do holidays. nor does home, since home is whatever the nature around me happens to offer up, wherever on earth that happens to be. maybe that’s my new definition of happiness. when home is always the place i find myself. home is here. home is now. home is what i notice around me. home is what i feel inspired to make art out of. which, if i do this thing right, could be anywhere on earth. happy thanksgiving.

put an egg on it

there are some principles you just don’t mess with. women and children first. don’t overcook a steak. make em laugh, make em cry, make em think. don’t post your latte foam on instagram. i before e except after c. when in doubt, put an egg on it. and if you really need a composition to work, arrange it in a circle. never fails.

nigella (devil-in-a-bush or love-in-a-mist)

haptics

imagine your are asked to go for a 20 minutes walk, and collect the widest array of natural textures you can find. interesting, right? usually we pick our subjects by sight. sometimes we even see the texture, assume we know what it feels like, and never fully explore it once in hand. these three wildly varied textures happened to snuggle up together on my specimen table recently. it’s got me thinking about the haptic. what if i went out to find a collection of subjects with my eyes closed? i’m excited by the composition i might create. it’s winter here now, with a few inches of snow cover. i may hold onto this idea until our forest floor is a little warmer, and amenable for sorting and sifting. but i am intrigues by this idea of a series of haptic compositions.