a delicate balance

i had a very unexpected reaction to cutting up these feathers. they have been sitting in a box in my garage for two years now. they were a little too beaten up to use in my usual STILL compositions. and yet. when i started cutting them i felt as if i were somehow causing injury. taking a blade to millenia of careful perfecting felt like a form of callousness. an undoing of a small part of the world that is everywhere being so comprehensibly undone. it felt like the opposite of a prayer. i like the visual result. but the composition gives me an uncomfortable feeling.

composition of cut feathers

assemblage in green and burnt orange

i had big plans this morning. my goal was to make a composition that looked like an interior designer’s mood board. i envisioned layers, at least three, with a background, and at least two overlapping  elements, with a mix of textures and a harmonious color palette. i gathered all my bits. and started laying everything out. and when i was done, full of hope and expectation, i realized i had just made the same kind of flatlay assemblage i always make. i have some unlearning to do.

no more graduation scrolls

we have two college seniors in the house right now; our daughter and her boyfriend. they are finishing out their final quarter of college with online classes. the classes seem to be going well enough. but they are missing their campus friends a lot. they had orchestrated their four years at college so they would have lightish spring quarters in their senior year so they could have time to hang with their friends–a sort of 10 week slow goodbye before they all spread across the globe. two weeks before the rest of the nation, they were abruptly kicked off campus when some of the first US cases of coronavirus showed up on stanford campus. as is the case almost everywhere else, there will be no graduation ceremony for them this june. they are a generation who grew up during the great recession. who are graduating into a worldwide pandemic. and yet somehow “millenials” has become a byword for a sort of privileged and checked-out triviality. ok boomer.

wild grape vine tendril details

forgaing with a teenager

i first saw these pampas-like grasses while zooming by at 60 mph on the freeway. the sun was at just the right angle to light them up like torches. i did a quick double-take and noticed that they were actually at the edge of a parking lot that was easily accessible from the next exit. the only hitch was that my 16 year son, who has a driver’s permit and is just learning how to do freeway driving, was behind the wheel. this was going to require a rushed lane change, and some possible passive aggressive honking from the cars behind him. i had to make a snap decision: he’s still not talking to me.

roadside phragmite pampas-like grasses

an auspicious beginning

our daughter is home for her spring semester of college. her boyfriend is also staying with us. he’s a native californian. it is always interesting to see your home through the eyes of someone experiencing it for the first time. he has been asking innocent, but insightful questions like “why don’t you have any big trees?”. i explained that by california standards our trees may appear unremarkable, but by northern standards we have quite large trees (noting the many 100 year old oaks in our woods). and then explained how harsh winter tended to limit the growth in the north. he has also observed how often our conversations and plans revolved around the weather: what’s the forecast tomorrow? what does the weekend look like? is it going to freeze tonight, can i keep the ham in the garage? is it going to be too windy to kayak tomorrow? when is the rain expected? was that lightening? frost is forecast, should we cover the plants?  you get the idea. for a californian from the central valley, where the weather is predictably sunny year round, it seems surprising. weather here is a primary consideration, not an afterthought. right now, our woods are still bare and monochrome with long sight-lines. there are buds but nothing has leafed out yet. i keep telling him that as soon as we get a few days of warm weather, and some rain, we will no longer be able to see into the woods. the vegetation will be too dense too see more than a few meters. he is disbelieving at the moment, but he’ll see. we will watch the woods fill up with green, like a slow motion movie, in this era when all time seems to have slowed.

collection of early spring buds