Nine hours later they start to bloom

I

It's kind of interesting. They were trash I had collected after a freeze--they'd simply fallen off the main body. I tossed them in the back of my truck; then in a hurry instead of planting them I literally tossed them in a heap on top of a pile of old inner tubes. After a month or so I noticed they had started to curl upward, then new cactus dohickees started growing along the up turned edges. Last week I began noticing budding and this afternooning they began flowering. I find this amazing. There isn't even a remote hint of soil, they aren't attached to the tubes at all. They seem to get everything they need from the air and sun. Amazing! Now if I can just make this so in my Own life--flower with simply breath and light.

Still growing in a pile of tubes

Mom gets trophy for fewest caught fish

That's no fish story. She was thrilled to receive her trophy.

And personally I must say if you must do a nursing home, I am impressed with the care shown my mom and her peers at Crestview in Bryan, TX. It's kind of an old crappy looking building but the caregivers, nurses and management are sunshine in my mom and dad's life. My mom smiles a lot now and that makes my dad smile too. Nursing homes are dang expensive even in crappy buildings but if your mom experiences joy there, enjoying her peers, nurses, aids and such, and gets the medical care needed, it is worth it!

Way to have a great attitude mom! You are a great role model.

Way to go Crestview crew! You are appreciated.

Thank you!

The unsmushed element of tire squash.

The details and intricacies are amazing

poem by a friend and another

My life cracks open.

I stand in it,
careful not to run.

-Jerry Webber

-----------------------------------

Listen -- are you breathing just a little
and calling it a life?

 -Mary Oliver

The parental units--a very good set

Excerpt from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey

Holding the Cup

We all must hold the cups of our lives. As we grow older and become more fully aware of the many sorrows of life - personal failures, family conflicts, disappointments in work and social life, and the many pains surrounding us on the national and international scene - everything within and around us conspires to make us ignore, avoid, suppress, or simply deny these sorrows. "Look at the sunny side of life and make the best of it," we say to ourselves and hear others say to us. But when we want to drink the cups of our lives, we need first to hold them, to fully acknowledge what we are living, trusting that by not avoiding but befriending our sorrows we will discover the true joy we are looking for right in the midst of our sorrows.

These reflections are taken from Henri J.M. Nouwen's Bread for the Journey. Www.HenriNouwen.org

i-park artist environmental residency

YES! I am headed to Connecticut for a month for an artist residency. Though i will still be sewing tire tubes most likely integrated into the tree canopies, i will most definitely be responding to the beautiful habitat, walking the grounds, and responding to the peaceful solitude. i am so looking forward to a month of nothing but making, writing, walking, and observing. The timing couldn't be better. I plan this week, pack next and hit the road.

i-park
The Artists’ Enclave at I-Park is a multi-disciplinary, international residency program for artists looking for time and space to conceive and execute new ideas and to work on existing projects. The quiet, retreat-like environment at I-Park is intended to be conducive to the creative process and the program is designed to foster a collegial atmosphere and sense of community among the participating artists. The rich natural environment often tempts artists to consider site-specific responses to their surroundings.

A morning with mom

And a stroll through her gardens.

Join me for the WASH student exhibition
Tuesday, May 11, 2010, 5 to 7 pm
WASH House, Huntsville, TX

Students have been busy preparing. Come and see.


The W.A.S.H. (Workshop in Art Studio and History) program is a unique opportunity for Sam Houston State University art students to participate in an experimental studio environment, exploring contemporary issues surrounding the visual arts.

The only program of its kind in Texas, the students explore various aspects of contemporary art in both theory and practice. A two-part program including both a studio and lecture component. It is designed to be a thorough introduction into both Art, and the visual arts program at Sam Houston State University. This program maintains its own facility known as the WASH house, a studio dedicated to this program and the students involved in it. The students going through the program will attain a sense camaraderie with one another, establishing bonds that will follow them throughout their academic careers at Sam Houston State University.

When coming north on 45, take first exit after Sam Houston Statue
travel along 75 ~1 to 2 miles. The WASH house is on the left.
If you get to McCoys, you passed it.

Parking is at a premium, carpool if possible.
Speed limit along hwy 75 is 50 mph so please be careful pulling in and out of the parking lot.

They really are growing on top of a stack of nonfunctional inner tubes--no dirt, just old tubes.

Trying to reduce courtyard foot print or in this case tire tread

By lining up ~6' tire tube nipples along fence. Hmmm. What will the
neigbhors say! Oh my!

"Our metaphors go on ahead of us, they know before we do. And thank goodness for that, for if I were dependent on other ways of coming to knowledge I think I'd be a very slow study. I need something to serve as a container for emotion and idea, a vessel that can hold what's too slippery or charged or difficult to touch. Will doesn't have much to do with this; I can't choose what's going to serve as a compelling image for me. But I've learned to trust that part of my imagination that gropes forward, feeling its way toward what it needs; to watch for the signs of fascination, the sense of compelled attention (Look at me, something seems to say, closely) that indicates that there's something I need to attend to. Sometimes it seems to me as if metaphor were the advance guard of the mind; something in us reaches out, into the landscape in front of us, looking for the right vessel, the right vehicle, for whatever will serve."
- Mark Doty

this seems to be so both with the physical making and the writing...though i tend to still be a slow study. this has proven true over the course of this year, i am a slow study, slow to believe in what i have denied

as with a magnifying glass, the intensity of focused light on that which withers will burn!

What happens emotionally and behaviorally between partners during the dissolution, the death, of their relationship is a direct magnification of the patterns of behavioral and emotional interaction that were the historical rhythms of the partnership--style of communication, conflict resolution or lack of, forgiveness or lack of, approaches to healing, defense mechanisms, underlying beliefs about the self and the partner, ability to trust, ability to give and receive acts of love, ability to take responsibility for one's own actions or blame, need to control or be controlled, handling of painful emotions of anger, grief, rage, dissociative habits, and the transference of others identities from one's childhood and their woundings onto the partner. The divorce process magnifies the problematic areas of each partners relational habits. This is important for the healing process if one chooses to evaluate their own actions, attitudes, and feelings. This horrifically intense magnifying glass is an opportunity to see where one has been blind to one's own actions and inactions. One must, or i choose to, look for goodness in spite of tragedy. And Yes, the interaction between the partners needs evaluated but more in terms of forgiveness for the self and the partner and for healing.

why is it fuzzy?

My first tattoo

Well, it is a henna tattoo so it will fade. It was part Of one team of our students inflatable installation (art?) projects. Fun.

xxit, our only all girl team.

Full moon, moving vehicle, camera phone

Solar cookery or art

Reminded me of an annual hchs Eco student project. In this case it is
art first, cooker second.

This week, orange is the blanket of wildflowers

north of navasota.

Your budget is no excuse for not making art

This is a modular madness project requiring students to work with 100
or more of the same item. This item...nail clippings! YES!

Truck and trailer loaded

Women & Their Work exhibition:
treading where no one hears
the echo of her foot fall

Two days to load,
two days to install,
two hours to disassemble,
1 to hour load....
several days to figure out how
and to actually store it.

Some things will grow anywhere

unfold (Rainer Maria Rilke)

I want to unfold.
Let no place in me hold itself closed,
for where I am closed, I am false.
I want to stay clear in your sight.

(Rainer Maria Rilke, trans. by Anita Barrows and Joanna Macy)

compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience

Col. 3:12-14 - "... clothe yourselves with compassion, kindness, humility, gentleness and patience. Bear with each other and forgive whatever grievances you may have against one another. Forgive as the Lord forgave you. And over all these virtues put on love, which binds them all together in perfect unity"

Ok. i will continue to work toward this...

Luke 6: ²⁷"But I tell you who hear me: Love your enemies, do good to those who hate you, ²⁸bless those who curse you, pray for those who mistreat you.²⁹If someone strikes you on one cheek, turn to him the other also. If someone takes your cloak, do not stop him from taking your tunic. ³⁰Give to everyone who asks you, and if anyone takes what belongs to you, do not demand it back. ³¹Do to others as you would have them do to you.
 ³²"If you love those who love you, what credit is that to you? ... ³³And if you do good to those who are good to you, what credit is that to you? ...³⁴And if you lend to those from whom you expect repayment, what credit is that to you?...' expecting to be repaid in full. ³⁵But love your enemies, do good to them, and lend to them without expecting to get anything back. Then your reward will be great, and you will be sons of the Most High, because he is kind to the ungrateful and wicked. ³⁶Be merciful, just as your Father is merciful.
³⁷"Do not judge, and you will not be judged. Do not condemn, and you will not be condemned. Forgive, and you will be forgiven. ³⁸Give, and it will be given to you. A good measure, pressed down, shaken together and running over, will be poured into your lap. For with the measure you use, it will be measured to you."
 ³⁹He also told them this parable: "Can a blind man lead a blind man? Will they not both fall into a pit? ⁴⁰A student is not above his teacher, but everyone who is fully trained will be like his teacher.
 ⁴¹"Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? ⁴²How can you say to your brother, 'Brother, let me take the speck out of your eye,' when you yourself fail to see the plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye..."

ok. i will continue to work toward these as well.

Tastes just as I remember it

Just hope no body sprayed pesticides on that honey suckle.

this week she turns 16!

my niece is a pretty amazing young woman! happy birthday. may it be the best year yet with so many more to follow!

Still

Driving has always soothed me.

Something about the landscape rolling past me

Eerek

That is not a stick!
And I am such a girl.

Period.

"The lives of other people are unknowable. Period. I wouldn’t go as far as a poet colleague of mine who says that 'representation is murder,' but I would acknowledge that to represent is to maim."


-Mark Doty, Return to Sender...