fog

the temperature is rising after days (months?) of unseasonable cold. a fog moved in silently over the landscape, thickening and settling in as i drew nearer to my weekday home. it at once obscured and made the bare, black trees more noticeable, more striking in their height, their branches more numerous and intricate against the greyish white of the fog. a hush settled over the landscape, like it had been swaddled in cotton, dampening all sound, save the odd birdcall, i imagined from the cocoon of my car, similarly grey and nondescript as it sped along the road. i didn't actually hear any birds, but their calls would both carry and be muffled by the fog and i could hear them in my head. fog transforms the ordinary into something extraordinary. your imagination fills in what's hidden. i exclaimed that i found the trees magical; my friend's daughter shivered and said she found them spooky. to her they were somehow alien and foreboding. the fog the same, our stories of it different. there's a life lesson in that somewhere.

putting the romance back in europe

i've shared photos before of the pictures of europe that i had in my head before i actually visited. i think as americans, we grow up with a rather romantic notion of europe - that it's filled with cobblestone streets, charming canals, ancient castles and grand sights like big ben and the eiffel tower. of course, the reality, when living there is your everyday, is that you might as well live in iowa or wisconsin. it's just your everyday and you go about your normal life, driving to your normal work in your rather old and shabby toyota (old and shabby because you pay 150% taxes on cars and that makes them very expensive), going to the normal (albiet rather small and with a limited selection) grocery store, coming home to your normal old falling-down farmhouse, where your husband is creating a new kitchen in what was once a pig stall. you know, totally normal, like everyone else.

but sometimes, you spot a charming little wonky house beside a moat and you remember those romantic pictures you had in your head. and you get a powerful longing in your soul, to go back to a time when the fantasy was still intact in your head. and you could go over and climb those stairs up to the little door, let yourself in and look around at the objects on the windowsills, shells, acorns gathered on a walk, maybe a feather. you would light a few candles, put on some tea and curl up with a book, occasionally gazing dreamily out of the window onto the moat.

and then you'd go for a little stroll over to the small castle, its walls a meter thick, to protect from marauding danes and you'd listen for the whispers of those who tread on those cobblestone walkways before you. and you sigh and say, "this is exactly how i imagined europe would be."

imagining a painting

today i start a painting course. like with oil paints and turpentine and canvases. already, i am imagining what i will do. i said aloud yesterday that i was imagining a multi-media canvas. due to my known deep and abiding love for iPods, those who heard this immediately imagined that i would fix one or more iPods to a canvas, paint them bright pink and make sure there was a way to plug it all in. i hadn't really thought about that, but they may be onto something there...no, instead, i have hazy pictures in my head (they haven't jelled yet) of bits of driftwood, knitted or felt decoration and beads on the canvas together with vibrant, lively colors. there are textures and combinations of the natural and the manufactured. the painting somehow addresses the question of memory which so occupies me at the moment.

there's something so exciting and anticipatory about holding pictures in your brain of soon-to-be-born creative endeavors...i am almost loathe to try to wrestle them to the canvas, as then that feeling of anticipation will dissipate and i will undoubtedly on some level experience disappointment. for while it is still in imagination, anything is possible, and once it's there on the canvas, it's solidified. yet, at the same time, i can't wait to get started. i'm in the liminal space once again, on the threshhold of something and full of anticipation to see how it turns out...