The Dome that Covers Us Daily

At the river, 3 nights in a row as the sun went down.

I haven't been everywhere in the world, but I have seen some pretty amazing places, and in most places, when the sun gets low, and when it just goes down, the whole world glows in a way that's beyond our day-to-day lives, and the light transports us, to a life somewhere else, beyond this one, maybe. Probably not. That's thick, but I am in the gloam- I think that might be what it's called- and it is so beyond alive, with itself, beyond what one would expect, with color and shape.

I see it as ignorant of us, not a reminder that we are part of some great Chain of Being, but more of a reminder that there is stark, cold beauty out there, and its stark and not cuddly and like your Mom, all loving, but cold, like a star, and literally cold,, like when we contemplate the cosmos lying in the cold desert. I don't really have any feeling that it even cares about me, or that all is one, or anything. Its more like I get to open the door a little, and look. Briefly, at the fabric that surrounds us, and our petty problems and politics and attempts to survive. The world, though much is life, is mostly dead, and the sky dominates it all, and is entirely dead and cold and all seeing and of tremendous beauty.

This must be the Edmund Burke thing, about the sublime, and I am guessing I am referring to the sublime.

I went to paint with my friend Mike Ball. If you live in this town, you know him. It would take a book or a Wikipedia article to describe him. His favorite type of beauty, and I can't tell much here, is a beautiful women. He's getting up to 70, so he's basing alot on his exploits and insights into the his long life. But it occurs to me, as we paint side by side looking down a grassy valley, what's the difference between the stark star here, shining down and spiking a glitterly light in a dim swamp, and a pretty girl?

 I can't say.

I think, the next night, as the moon rises up and it's freezing cold and the last geese come in and disappear into the black fringe of the forest, that if i had to leave this world, that I'd be ok with doing it here, and just say good bye to the great world around and close and uncaring,  and go out, and really maybe not be too clinging or worried about it.That's a hard thought to come by.

Here are a few images from the the evenings in the valley..

Trajecting

Spring busts in through a crack in the February cold, and its warm and delightful and makes you happy to swim in it, as it feels like swimming, in the thickness and warmth of it. Absence makes the heart, and skin, grow fonder, and I personally have no great affection for beaches and just being in the sun, day after day, but I wouldn't want to miss out on a day like today.

Of course, I mostly worked, I organized my shop, and sawed up branches, and talked to Sylvia, my neighbor, who is conniving a way to use an abandoned yard waste recycling bin so we both can use it for free, and then my friend Brian came down to help me haul away what ended up to be 1998 pounds of moldy fir paneling and roofing, and it felt pretty good. We had a burger at the local biker hangout and watched the bikers, and then hauled everything over to Kirkland.

He shared with me a secret about himself, which i find sort of fascinating, partly, as i had no idea, and partly because i have known him for 40 years and its the first I've heard of it. He says he has this uncanny ability to predict how long something will take to do. So, although its a long drive to where we are going, and there are lots of variables, he knows exactly when to stop working, so that we get there on time. As we work, he says "20 minutes!", that sort of thing, and I respect someone yelling this out, so I do try to make it happen, but have to struggle with some straps to tie off the load. I figure, well, there's no way we're going to make it, and he says, yes we will. In fact, we do, dead on. I say, you're like a Garmin, you must have the same chip in you.

He says its deeper than that. He can kick a soccer ball, or see one kicked, and as it leaves his toe, or another's, he will know exactly where it will land. Somehow he processes the power of the kick, the direction, all of that, and it works out. He credits this for his ability to play soccer so well. He's there when the ball comes down, or he knows when a goalie is too far away from the goal to stop his kick.

Not a guy to toot his own horn, so I totally believe this.

It reminds me of a book i read a long time ago and had forgotten about. The ability to know and predict a trajectory, and to see with foresight things that haven't happened yet, are the reason ((I have read), that us mammals made it, and why the dinosaurs ended up with feathers, or as chickens, laying eggs again and again, which we eat, and they seem okay with.

This idea is in one of my favorite why-are-we-what-we-are books called "Synapsida". We descended, i would guess you know ( if you agree we are older then 4,650 years old)  from nocturnal rat like animals, trying to get by. At night.

At night, because during the day, chicken ancestors prowled the earth, looking for rats.

So, at night, you hear a sound, and it is critical that you know where that sound is going to be in a few more seconds, as you can't see it. It might be something to eat, like a bug, or, it might be something that will eat you. This makes sense to me. You predict. As a rat. You end up with a brain that can see things that haven't happened yet. This eventually proceeds to a creature that knows it will die, but can't do anything about it, but that's really just a side effect of the larger movement to survive.

That's the tie in, knowing that a cockroach is crossing your path in two seconds, and seeing a soccer ball start its ascent, and knowing where it will fall, and knowing that we are all on trajectories, predictable, if we were just a tad smarter about the whole thing.

Paint Box, Another 30?

Tools are the the things that separate the Chimps, Humans, and  Corvids from the rest of the low-life animal kingdom. And some kind of other bird I can't recall. Emperor Bird. Is that it?

And tools are the things that make things like Art possible. A pencil. Paint. Musical instruments.

I guess one's voice isn't a tool, or maybe its like a built in one. Or maybe the idea is wrong.

Anyway, a tool is the thing we can move the moon with. That's a reference, I think, to Archimedes, who said if he had a long enough lever he could move the moon with it. I could never picture this exactly, but the concept is that its how we are able to do a lot of things that we couldn't do otherwise.

For me, i'd say half of the work I do is figuring out the tools. And in painting, the unsung workhorse of it all, the thing you saw Cezanne banging around with, if you looked at the old photos of home and tried to figure out what the heck he carried around, is:  the paint box. Its not even the thing you paint with, its the thing you carry paint with. Its the mule. Its like a tool to hold tools. Maybe that's not a tool.

For me, its enshrines almost my whole feeling about doing art. It's been my companion the whole time. It tells me I want to be a Real Artist someday. Its something you don't have unless you are a Painter. Its a special club of people that have them.

 I got the one I have used til last week from Standard Brands maybe 30 years ago. (Thats the old place you got art supplies before Dan Smth and all the fancy internet companies. Not really an inspiring name, I barely remember it. )And i have built it, and rebuilt it, a ton. Loved it. And it busted on me last week and tested my tolerance. Here it is, on its way to the trash, poor friend:

 

This box has writing on it. Recent. It has my name (at top), and at the bottom, I have written reminders at the bottom of stuff I usually forget, and curse myself when out in the field. My fault. Age, But this box. 30 years old? Is done with. Loved it, depended on it. But it busted again.

And so I took this ancient Metal Box from my friend Lori Peterson and now it is my PERFECT box and I am so HAPPY with it. A new tool can make you happy. At least for an hour or two. I milk it.  Here is how I customize this box, after many years of trying to figure out what i need in a box without being too complicated.

First, I clean it, sand it , and I cut up short pieces of 1.5x1.5 flashing and I silicone them in so that my paints don't get all mixed up and beat up. And I split the brush tray up into two sections. .

Then i take my Silicoil cleaner, and i bend a piece of aluminum, and I hose strap it on. The hook allows me to hook it over my paint box. Works great.

Then i rivet on some D hooks and straps (you can just see one at right), and this is how it all looks. There is more I do, but this is the meat of making a box that works. It sets on my easel perfectly, it is tough and light. My palette (I also built it, you use shellac and titanium white pigment), fits in here.

I am going to figure out a way I can have my brushes on the back panel when I paint- that's about the last thing I need to figure out and never have. But I have an idea or two.


It's a tool. And as lovely as art, to me anyway. Maybe I get another 30 years working with this one.