Colorized

With a respectful nod to Seth Apter's celebration of "True Colors" on The Altered Page this week, it seemed fitting to sling some color around in this vicinity. The piece shown here, created on glossy card stock with Tria markers, black Sharpie pens in fine and ultra fine, is intended to be photocopied, then cut - or torn - for use as borders in journals, cards, ATCs, collages. On the high gloss paper, the marker colors are particularly vivid and create the appearance of having been printed rather than drawn. This was one of the samples shown at the Journal Improv demo Lisa Hoffman and I presented last Saturday. She spoke of keeping a number of journals open and available, mentioning that it could be handy to keep one by the phone for doodling. From now on, I'll have glossy paper and a Sharpie or two near my phone...why waste those shapes and squiggles on the back of an envelope?

Where the wind takes you

Is anything its simple-seeming, literal self (as in, "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar.")? Today we have the big winds, and I think of a bully pushing from the back of the line so that everyone ahead stumbles. At the same time, the skies are clear (not counting the dust), there is movement - a sign of life - where all is generally still and, though it defies explanation, a sense of change.

I have never been one who saw things that people said weren't there; any fancied alterations to the status quo come to me as ideas, not sights. If I had Spiderman's inklings, I'd say something was afoot. Wind is a perfect metaphor for things not remaining as they are. (Apropos of synonyms, like, what is another way to say change, in a recently-viewed documentary segment on "Monty Python's Flying Circus," John Cleese explained how he brought a thesaurus to the session in which they wrote the Dead Parrot sketch, running through the list of all words and phrases that meant dead.)

So if things are not static but fluctuating, what are they becoming? And what things are they?

Right now I have no answer, only the questions. And in the absence of a clear answer, I know to wait. Could be the wind swept away some mental debris, leaving open space. Whatever may arrive to fill it has not yet appeared. Or perhaps everything that was lodged there yesterday remains today, only rearranged, not quite where I left it. So it may not be a traditional species of change that I sense, more an altered perspective; why, the room DOES look bigger with the dresser under the window. Los Angeles dwellers are known to become disoriented by our winds, except they are generally the hot, autumnal Santa Anas. It is equally possible that I've read too much into what is merely a shifting weather pattern. They say sometimes a wind is just a wind.

THE ALTERED PAGE celebrates "True Colors"

Seth Apter, creator of THE ALTERED PAGE blog, extends the following invitation with regard to the art journaling collaborative publication, True Colors.

"Join me in celebrating this sensational publication. Beginning on Sunday May 9 and running everyday through Sunday May 16, The Book Guild on The Altered Page will be hosting a True Colors event. Nearly all of the original True Color artists will be sharing their personal thoughts about the project, the publication, and the experience of collaborating with the group. In organizing the stories they have shared, I can easily see why this project was so special and unique. This is one amazing group of artists. And if you have been impacted in any way by True Colors, you can just imagine how it impacted them! So mark your calendars, spread the word, and stop by beginning this Sunday to hear and share their stories. "

My thanks to Seth for the opportunity to share some of my True Colors experiences and to see what the other contributors have to say about theirs. Once you see his blog, you will recognize it as the rich resource it has become for book and mixed-media artists around the world.

Journal Improv in Claremont, CA

(Article reprinted from the Stamp Your Heart Out e-newsletter, click HERE)

Word of the week: Improvise: Anyone who cooks knows the momentary panic which results when a recipe's key ingredient is missing from the pantry. Oh, the tap dancing begins. So we patch and fill, make our best guess and, with luck and a bit of skill, produce something not only edible, possibly superior. In any given 24-hour period, we are likely called upon to just "make it up" in order to solve a problem, a challenge, a frustration. Art forms may be the birthplace of improvisation; a forgotten line, not remembering how to spell a word so choosing a substitute, using the like-new tube of green instead of the intended, but depleted, blue. And on Saturday, May 8, fellow "True Colors" artist Lisa Hoffman and I will take a bold step and present a lecture/demo at Stamp Your Heart Out which we are calling JOURNAL IMPROV. In the privacy of our own minds, we are generally quick on our feet and we trust that ability will not desert us as customers and friends arrive with lists of materials for which they have no clear purpose. Our intention is to come up with suggestions for puzzling supplies which will make your journal pages (time to begin, if you haven't yet) sing. The presentation will begin at 1 p.m. and will include prepared technique samples, and the advertised thoughts on how to improvise when you feel lost, discouraged, stuck, blocked or simply uncertain. Please come and say hello; join us for what we hope will be a lively exchange.

Thank you, HP

This morning, having discovered that I somehow (don't ask, I have no answer) ordered the wrong ink cartridges for our newer HP printer/copier, I called the HP Home & Home Office Store to see if I could arrange a return/exchange. I anticipated that I would have to wait while the first cartridges (which are the correct ones for our older printer) got back to HP, then have the paper work processed, then watch the skies for the replacement arrival. My mood was cranky, because this was my error, because I wanted the color cartridge now, and because it felt as though forward momentum on projects with deadlines had come to a skidding halt. Oh, exquisite surprise.

The short version is this: correct replacement cartridges were on their way, I was to keep the ones ordered in error which were nonetheless useful, there was no charge, there was no difficulty. I am not enamored of ordering products on line; I am an old-fashioned type who likes to speak with a human. For this reason, if an on-line ordering site offers the choice of telephone ordering, I pick that. Last week, by talking with an actual person at Dick Blick, I was able to find out about and arrange for speedy delivery of needed materials. Today with HP Home & Home Office, I received service that surpassed anything I could have anticipated and I wanted to share that information and give thanks to customer service agent Kelly for bringing gladness back to my morning. There was a survey following the business of my call, which I had already agreed to take, and I had the chance to leave a voice message expressing my appreciation.

My experiences with customer service representatives around the world, for many of them are certainly working from distant sites, have been studies in patience and generosity...fees waived, that sort of thing. HP, however, so greatly exceeded my expectations - added to the fact that by ordering from them there are no shipping fees and delivery is next business day - that I felt sharing the story with others was my duty. There are signs all around us - and if you read these postings you know I am vigilant in my search for them - that remind us we stand beneath a shower of continual benevolence. I may need to add a subtitle to this blog, for how often the theme appears: There are no small blessings.

Somewhere in time

Los Angeles television used to have a newsman named Ralph Story. His segments during local broadcasts covered stories that often reached an "off the beaten path" status. Then he had a show called, "Things That Aren't Here Any More," and for Los Angeles natives, that list is long.

Bunker Hill (scene of John Fante stories and Angel's Flight railway), the Pacific Electric Big Red Cars that ran from the mountains to the sea, Mt. Lowe, a tourist attraction high above Pasadena reachable only by funicular and a narrow railway, all the amusement parks along the coast, the movie palaces on Broadway (though some have made a comeback through restoration and Mexican wrestling), gone.

Each of our lives, I am certain, contains such vanished sites of memory and significance. The stories of Brigadoon and Camelot - wonders which lived briefly, magically - resonate with our pasts, especially seen through the lens of our own losses. I grew up with dime stores, plentiful and vast in Pasadena, even more legendary in downtown Los Angeles...lunch counters a block long, Cokes that never tasted as good anywhere else, carnival rides set up in the basement at Christmas, much missed, enduring.

Eventually, memory seems to take on an aspect of longing and with longing comes a pang of suffering, which makes those mental visits to the past some of our most bittersweet moments. In spite of a determined commitment to being in the present, I have to believe that even the most pragmatic mind can become lost in reverie. First-hand experiences and those relayed by DNA have taken residence in our cells; they have built us to be who we are.

I wonder about historians, devotees of people or times other than today, and how difficult they find the commute between worlds. The in-depth study of a subject surely creates an intimacy; a lifetime spent with, say, Benjamin Franklin or the Incas, the Ballet Russes or Confederate battles, will reveal their weaknesses and beauty. Will that study create a force that pulls the researcher into the world of his subject, a kind of homesickness for what would appear to be known intellectually? Are we only haunted by our own memories or does collective thought make us vulnerable to all the moments that have ever been?

It is no secret that I experience time as a fluid state and contemplate the extent to which each of us resides in a world built of then, now and tomorrow, a hovering presence just out of sight which we know by intuition. Time undulates, it swirls - I can't tell you why but the current seems to be clockwise - and my impression is that we are afloat in its limitlessness, which simply mirrors the continuum within.

I am not the first to find this puzzling. Maybe such curiosity is what draws anyone into writing (or attempting to write) science fiction; Jules Verne and I do share a birthday. Maybe it is a symptom of imbalance or over-active imagination; maybe it is a form of wisdom that would require several lifetimes to shift from speculation to fact. If you know of any scholarly, genius types who share this vision, will you let me know? Meanwhile, you will find me here on my imaginary raft, testing the current's flow.

Nature in suburbia

As spring hits its stride, vignettes around the neighborhood attract our attention.

The wind has been blowing for the past 5 days; two, three days ago it was all flailing palm fronds and snapping branches. And still the drone of leaf-blowers could be heard above the wind's own noise.

One of the necessary keys on the front gate touch pad is broken so newspapers haven't been arriving at the front door. "Waiting for a part" is given as the reason for delay. My son, knowing the vintage of all moving parts in our complex, suggests that a time machine would be the best means of acquiring the missing piece.

As the sun rises and sets, and often at random in-between moments, the wild parrots of South Pasadena lift en masse from their perches and shriek through the skies. There must be some reason or order for what they do but it seems more like the aerial version of citizens fleeing Godzilla. Their unique sound interferes with room-to-room conversations, drowns out a tv at reasonable volume and causes anyone on the other end of a phone call to ask, "What's THAT?"

Very like the celebrated Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill, introduced to us in a documentary film of the same name, our flock are all lime green, the color most intense when the sun shines through their feathered wing tips or tails, which they fan as they bounce on the utility wires. As they venture closer to our windows, we see the red/orange on their heads and in prominent circles on their wings. I need to study their San Francisco counterparts again; that may help me understand whether they squabble as energetically as they seem to for a reason or if that is simply eccentric-appearing parrot behavior and not an indication of collected malcontents.

Nature in suburbia has taken a peculiar turn or two for us. Greatest oddity was the arrival of the voodoo lily. As I stepped through the patio door of our former home in Pasadena, it smelled as though a cat-sized (at least) animal had died and was decomposing under the bouganvilla. There had been no poisonous smell the night before. I noticed masses of flies, further confirmation of something quite dead. But they seemed to be clustered on a bit of curious flora rising amid familiar plantings.

Stepping closer, the creepy-looking, slowly unfurling flower was obviously the source of the great stink. Family members were gathered, closer looks taken, disgust registered. Calls to the LA County Arboretum and Huntington Library and Gardens resulted in a diagnosis: a voodoo lily was blooming outside our back door. The house had been in my family, at that time, for more than 20 years and no voodoo lily had ever been seen - or smelled - on the property.

The botanists we consulted said its bulb could have been long dormant, a bird could have carried a seed, none of the above. What they could tell us was that the odor would not persist; the flies would move on. The plant morphed through its normal stages over a period of days, never to appear again as long as we lived there. At the time, it had the aspect of an ill omen. My sometimes spotty memory no longer links its appearance to other unwelcome happenings, yet I am certain it was just one of several unpleasantnesses that carpooled into our lives.

In years since, we have seen television coverage of the blooming of what they call a corpse plant at the Arboretum. Video tape shows lines winding slowly past the potted oddity, interviewees taking pleasure in describing the off-putting fragrance. To think we could have charged admission.

And then there were the hours my father once spent poised with a hoe above a gopher hole, the patient hunter, if only there had been decoy gophers or some instrument to call them. The gophers always won, as did the snails on the mulberry bush, though we managed to outlast the voodoo lily. But never doubt that nature will always come out ahead. After all, it was here first.