Gathering the Fragments, Beautifully

Blue Ruins, acrylic on canvas, 48" x 24"
private collection, Arvada, Colorado

...Let’s buy some toy soldiers
and melt them with glass.

Let’s burn up the armies
that have never loved us. Let’s

give the sun all our money
and pay it never to return.

Let’s sing to the moon
All day and the stars all night

so that they never go dark. Let’s
laugh at the clouds until they rain

gray with anger and thunder
from gray embarrassment.

Let’s paint the hospitals with milk

and the funeral homes with tears

and the sky some color

other than blood.

Let’s place candles
in the bullet holes of the Earth

and snuff the flames out

only when we have finished
writing our poetry....

--from "Lorca in Fragments" by Oakley C. Merideth

A lyrical to-do list, Oakley, one in which the priorities make so much sense. First things first. Poetry before the political, always. Then again, the two do not have to contradict each other, when performed with grace. And this is such a graceful homage to Lorca. I always take pleasure in the way your poems move from one image into the next, a blossom of meaning opening, subtly, almost imperceptibly, the way a flower opens to the sun.

As I'm sure many of you know, last month was National Poetry Month in the United States. And, at the end of that month my son learned that his poem "Vulgar Latin" received Honorable Mention in the undergraduate Academy of American Poets Prize competition at The University of New Mexico. Two undergraduates were recognized--Oakley, and Katlyn McKinney, who took first prize honors (and a cash prize) for her poem "Water Passing." Both poets will receive an official acknowledgment from the Academy of American Poets this summer.

This news of Oakley's latest literary honor satisfies me. Even the fact that such a competition exists, one which encourages young people to develop their gifts, satisfies me. Our lives are often bereft of poetry. We hunger for it. And it is my pleasure to offer up this tasty morsel, Oakley's honored poem:

Vulgar Latin

Some days your mouth
is a birth canal,
stories spilling out
of a child you hardly remember, how
she came out of you
like a full moon
emerging from a broken window,
her face imbuing the drafty room
with a pale light.

She was a January Capricorn
born just an hour or two before
the first papers were whispering
their headlines onto the dark porches
where they had just fallen.

That was the morning
you began to speak a dead language,
your eyes sliding backwards
to peer curiously into your skull
and your tongue free

To form a word you had never encountered:
“Daughter.”

“Daughter.”
Two syllables that fell
onto the hospital floor
and spread outward across the linoleum
like ashes touching a checkerboard
of white and black water.

Some days you clutch
the nearest pieces of furniture
and whisper to yourself
while the rest of the house
is stifled by your voice.

“Daughter…”
some days you say the word vaguely
as if you were recalling the name of a ghost,
and then you stop speaking,
the utterance yielding to silence
like a piano drifting out of tune.

Pulled by the Red Thread

Deja vu, acrylic on canvas, 30" x 40"
private collection, Dallas

"An invisible red thread connects those destined to meet, regardless of time, place, or circumstances. The thread may stretch or tangle, but never break." - Ancient Chinese Proverb

I believe this proverb is accurate, at least partially so. I'm not sure the thread is red. After all, it is invisible. And I'm not sure that the thread never breaks. If, for example, in a pinch you grabbed your invisible red thread and used it to floss your teeth, who knows what might happen? Would you meet the periodontist of your dreams? Or would you break your invisible thread, leaving your destiny dangling between your second and third molars? Despite my digression, I'm a believer in this thread. Aren't there people in our lives, people who entered under unlikely circumstances, people whom we can't imagine having never met? People whose lives have become so enmeshed in our own, it's as though their lives help us create our own lives.

Anyone who has known me for any time at all has heard the story of how I won a round-trip plane trip to San Francisco in 1982. That was twenty-eight years ago and I was twenty-eight years old. Imagine that. I was miserable where I was--Tuscaloosa, Alabama--and I read in the paper that Republic Airlines would be giving away round-trip plane tickets--I can't remember the number (50?) to the city chosen by each winner. All you had to do was show up at the airport on the appointed day--Sunday, March 7--fill in a little piece of paper, and drop it in a slot. Winners would be drawn from a box by a Republic employee. As I read the notice, I experienced a little tingle. You're going to win a ticket, a little voice whispered. Then another voice said, Dream on.

The anticipated Sunday arrived. I drove my Ford Pinto (that was the vehicle whose gas tank was prone to exploding in rear-end collisions) to Tuscaloosa Regional Airport. My spirits were high. The dogwood was blossoming. The kudzu was prolific. I rolled down all the windows and turned onto Airport Road. My heart sank. The road was lined with cars. I realized the unsettling truth: I would be vying with half the county's population for a handful of plane tickets. The odds were daunting. I kept driving past car after parked car lining the road. There were several Pintos, one with a crumpled rear end but no signs (thank goodness) of having burst into flames. I just kept driving past all of these cars, in a trance. A sensible person would have parked behind the last car on the highway and run straight to the airport so as not to be late. But I was in a trance. The little voice told me to drive. It told me I was going to win a ticket!

I turned left at the airport and pulled into the tiny lot, wondering how early the fate-kissed occupants of those parking spaces had arrived. Had they camped out overnight? As I approached the entrance, a car parked in the space nearest the entrance began, unbelievably, pulling out. You're going to win a ticket! the little voice said. Dream on, the other voice said.

I pulled into the magically vacated space, walked into the airport, shaking a little, and elbowed my way through the delirious throng to get my name in the box.

I was a little surprised to find my good friend Glenda standing a few feet away, and even more surprised to find her mother Louise standing beside her. Their faces were flushed with hope. I decided to stand with them. After all, it would be fun to be among friends when my name was pulled from the box. You're going to win a ticket!

A guy from the airlines stood at a podium and made a little speech (while everyone's gaze was fixed on the box), then he began drawing names. He pulled 45 names. My name wasn't one of them. Unbelievable.

Dream on, the hateful little voice said.

Name 46 was "LOUISE JONES." Louise Jones?

Glenda and I looked at each other with this shameful little look that said, How DARE she?

Louise made her way to the podium to claim her voucher. She was elated. How DARE she? Four more names were pulled. Glenda's and mine weren't among them. UnBElievable.

The general mood was grim. The crowd began pleading with the Republic guy in unison--"DRAW SOME MORE NAMES. PLEASE. WE WANT MORE NAMES. PLEEEEASE. PLEEEEEEASE. PLEEEEEEEEEEASE."

He relented and waved his palms at us, kind of preacherly, as though he had in his power to bestow blessings on the multitude. (He did.)

"OK, folks! We didn't expect this kind of turnout. FIVE more."

Everyone applauded. I inhaled deeply.

The Republic official began drawing names.

"LEROY SCOGGINS." Redneck clown.

"TANYA CULPEPPER." White trash bitch.

"BETTY SUE CULPEPPER." For God's sake, who rigged this anyway?

"REVEREND CECIL GRIMES." You have GOT to be kidding.

"GLENDA JONES." Glenda Jones??? How DARE she?

Glenda beamed and elbowed her way to the podium, an athletic little spring in her step. HOW? DARE? SHE?

The crowd moaned. There were tears in people's eyes. There were tears in my eyes.

"OK! OK!" shouted the Republic official. "ONE MORE. But NO MORE after that. Do we all understand??"

The crowd cheered.

The Republic official's hand moved very slowly over the box. He let it hover in a holding pattern. He felt like he was at the Academy Awards. I inhaled deeply. I closed my eyes. I felt like I was at the Academy Awards.

"SAN BELL."

You've won a ticket! the little voice shouted.

A month later Glenda and Louise and I boarded a plane to San Francisco. Technically we boarded a plane in Tuscaloosa, which headed a few miles west, touched down at The Golden Triangle Regional Airport in Mississippi, then turned around to fly east to Atlanta, where another plane took us to Denver, where we boarded another one for Las Vegas, where we had an overnight layover, complete with free accommodations and a complimentary meal in a casino, and a few quarters for the slots, before we caught a flight to San Francisco. The tickets were free, not efficient.

Me, Glenda, and Louise. April 1982.

Just outside the edge of the photo is the invisible red thread. I felt it tugging at my ankle as I climbed the stairs to the plane. In San Francisco the tug was more insistent. Although my friends and I had only a week to explore that city, I knew I would return. Less than three months later I packed my bags and returned for good. I brought no furniture. (I'd sold that to finance my move.) Just some clothing and a few linens, what I could squash into two large suitcases. My mother drove me to the airport. She was wistful and probably a little frightened, but she knew about the red thread somehow, and I knew she knew. The thread pulled me with urgency and I knew that somehow all would work out. It did.

My destiny wasn't in my hands alone. There were other people too, who held the other end of the thread, sitting on the top of a hill in San Francisco, as I boarded the plane. Soon I would be climbing into the air, looking down as the red clay fields of Alabama disappeared beneath the clouds, and an invisible red thread pulled me higher, 31,000 feet into the air, across miles of crops and forests and desert, across the Mississippi River and the Rocky Mountains...to San Francisco...where those who held my destiny's thread had been waiting for me...

How they knew to pull the thread at that exact moment, especially given they were yet to be born, is a mystery, an exquisite mystery...but I believe it had something to do with this one, who held a thread too...

Honest Scrap

Jingle has proffered me the Honest Scrap award. I'm now supposed to offer up 7 scraps of riveting information about myself. Hmmmmmmmmmm. Let me see. Long-time readers of this blog know my shoe size, the distance from my wrist to the tip of my index finger, the fact that I once worked in the home improvements section of a discount department store, and my favorite color--all of them. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm. Oh yeah, you also know I grew up in the circus and was born breech. I'm an open book. What else can I reveal?

1. When I was a kid I had a trick knee. If I knelt, it would lock. This meant that for the pivotal kneeling scene in my role as an angel in the Christmas play, I had a stunt angel.
2. I have won three prizes in my lifetime: a blue bedspread when I was in the fourth grade, a round-trip plane ticket to San Francisco when I was 28, and just recently, $1.00 at the grocery store in the Lucky Dollars event. Scratch that last prize. Everyone who purchased $10,000.00 in groceries during a six-week period was guaranteed a minimum prize of $1.00. What can I say? I may not be the luckiest knife in the drawer, but I recognize a deal.
3. Every time I purchase 28 pounds of bird feed at Sam's Club, I feel all warm and fuzzy. Not because of the hungry birds lining up at the feeders in my backyard, but because the CEO of Sam's owns one of my paintings.
4. I have a dark, deep, irrational, devastatingly embarrassing fear--please don't tell anyone--that one of my paintings is hanging in the Salvation Army Thrift Store in Bentonville, Arkansas.
5. The price tag on the painting is less than that on the 28-pound box of birdfeed displayed artistically beside it.
6. The birdfeed is snapped up by a savvy bargain hunter. "Hey, this beats Sam's Club! But get a load of the tab on that painting--$29.99! Who are they kidding? My parakeet could do that. Hell, my parakeet could do better than that!!
7. I have a proclivity to twisted, paranoid fantasies.

Now I'm to pass this award on to seven bloggers who are to reveal 7 scraps of truths about themselves. Do the math. That makes for 49 juicy tidbits. Let's go for broke. Anybody reading this who wants this award on their blog and is prepared to dish up the truths, just comment here, expressing your intentions. We're all ears.

The Sun Is Out

Brilliant Corners, 36" x 24", acrylic on canvas
private collection, Albuquerque

The New Mexico sun is gracing us today and my spirits are lifted. We've been having a snowier than average winter thanks to El Nino--great news for the anticipated spring runoff of the mountain snowpack into the rivers and reservoirs. This magical springtime flow replenishes our desert water supply. And, yes, the fallen snow in downtown Santa Fe is stunning...

St. Francis of Assisi Cathedral
photo courtesy Henry Lopez, The Santa Fe New Mexican

One of the reasons I live in Santa Fe, however, is our 325 days of sunshine per year. I need those brilliant shafts to shine into the darker corners of my house and soul. When those corners are warm, I have a place to go. I can lean against the wall, close my eyes, feel the sunshine on my eyelids, and know that underneath all this...


...an unseen light is forming this...


There are brilliant corners in the dead of winter. When I close my eyes, I see them.

Awaken me from this nightmare....please.

Dreamer, acrylic on canvas, 24" x 48"

private collection, Albuquerque

I must have exceeded my allowable technology celebration quotient (TCQ). Just as I was getting used to this dazzling new i-Mac with the 27-inch screen, the gallery i-Mac (with only 17 inches) began wearing its heart on its sleeve. Jealousy no doubt. Bennie called to tell me an odd arrangement of bars had begun stalking the cursor and icons. Turns out our video card is on its death bed and heroic efforts to revive would not be cost-effective. SO now we're making final arrangements--in lieu of flowers please send flash drives-- and shopping for another computer.

There's more. I went for coffee and came back to find my itty bitty i-Book, my oh-so-lovable hand-me-down from Flannery, was making asthmatic wheezing sounds, the cool-down fan whirring frantically. Turning it on its belly, popping out the battery and re-inserting it, calmed it temporarily--a kind of reverse shock treatment. The operative word in the last sentence is temporarily. The teeny-tiny laptop has now gone beyond the veil and reincarnated as a Dell. Shudder.

There's nothing like a technological setback, the frenzied backing-up of data, the ensuing selection of new software--decisions, decisions--to sap my urge to create. Or breathe.

Good news is: Despite downtown Santa Fe being its typically wintertime lackluster self, I have sold a couple of paintings--"Dreamer," pictured above, and this one, which you've seen...

A Good Omen, 24" x 36"
private collection, Arlington, Virginia

Here's hoping that's a good omen. Couldn't we all use one of those?

Thank You for Your Concern...As You Can See, We're Fine.

Dropped out of blogging again and I appreciate your inquiries regarding the state of things here. As you can see, we remain sound in body and mind...

Friday will be Oakley's 21st birthday. He has matured into an upstanding young man. With the hair to prove it.

David is getting ready to apply for graduate school in neuroscience. His primary interest is in the burgeoning field of inverse relationship between shirt collar/frontal lobe dimensions.

Flannery continues to build her med school application while performing experiments of a highly classified nature at the Mind Research Network. She is looking for volunteers. Can I see a show of hands?

Aside from David's thyroid condition, we'd give life two thumbs up. WAY up.

If I only had a thumb. And I'm glad that someone finds this condition so amusing.

(The funhouse photos are the result of playing with the Photo Booth application on my new iMac, courtesy Santa Bennie.)

The Disappearing Woman

When my sister Rhonda was 5, she got her head stuck between two wrought iron rails on our front porch. I don't remember what prompted her to put her head between those rails. Maybe she was playing "Jail." All the kids on Emmet Street loved to stand on our front porch, grab a couple of the rails, and chant, "Look, I'm in jay-yul! Look, I'm in jay-yul!" This was well before the days of video games and ipods. Our thrills were much cheaper. If a kid had two wrought iron rails to wrap their hands around, they were in business. They were in jail. Just like Otis on The Andy Griffith Show.

Maybe Rhonda was playing with the idea of her head breaking out of jail. Her logic must have been:

• I think.
• Therefore I am in jail.
• I think with my head.
• If I can get my head on the other side of these rails, I won't think.
• I'll be out of jail once I get my head on the other side.
  

She did have a philosophical bent early on. It runs in the family. It's a wonder I didn't pull such a stunt. Then again, that's what little sisters are for. Did I talk her into this? I hope not, but I don't clearly recall. Although I don't remember who came to her rescue, it had to be our mother. She must have spent a good fifteen minutes lightly holding Rhonda's head, coaxing my sister to turn her head a quarter-inch this way, take an eighth step backwards with her right foot--good! we've got your right ear back--now a quarter-inch that way, step back--here comes the left ear! Having given birth to breech babies twice, my mother was adept at such maneuvers. The neighborhood kids stood in our front yard, silent, in open-mouthed awe of such magic.

Has Rhonda ever put her head through a pair of rails again? Has anyone who witnessed that scene--the breathless kids, their parents watching from the windows--dared a repeat performance? Hell no. And yet we all keep trying to get our head out of jail. My sister writes. I paint.

When a painting isn't going well, I feel like I've poked my head right through the canvas. On the other side of the canvas is a wall, a place to bang my head. When things are going well, though, I feel like a magician has sawed me in half. I gaze from my severed head at my hands. They belong to someone else. They know just what to do. They coax my head to the other side of the canvas. It turns just enough...this way, then that...the top of my head disappears. There goes my forehead. My eyebrows, nose, lips, chin. I am looking at the painting from the other side. I have eyes in the back of my head. Red paint splashes over them. I disappear.

I'm feeling no pain.

Travels with the Magician
48" x 24"
acrylic on canvas
private collection, Mercer Island, Washington

How do you get your head out of jail?