mountain haiku

descending, Taos Mountain in winter, Taos, New Mexico, C-41 color film print, January 2003, photo © 2003-2008 by QuoinMonkey. All rights reserved.

Taos Mountain sunset
holds a fading memory
yellow snaps of sage

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

-related to post: haiku (one-a-day)

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PRACTICE – Tools Of The Trade – 20min

Van Morrison is on in the background singing, They Sold Me Out. Later…Jools Holland. The sky is lit up at 7:51. A few months ago, dark by 4pm. I’m thinking about Mrs. Blume, my 4th grade teacher. She said her son, Jules had a crush on me. Why? Because my hair looked like Patty Duke. Swirl, schwish, swoop under the chin.

But this writing practice is about Tools of the Trade. It’s hard to dive right in. I splayed everything out on the couch beside me. The bucket of Kid’s Crafts 100 FineLine Markers, The Crayola GlitterGlue and PipSqueak makers, the Portfolio 24 Oil Pastels, yellow cat with green box, long eyelashes, sylin’.

I’m looking at the Canson watercolor paper manufactured in France, 9×12 and 4×6, cold press, Montval Aquarelle. Liz bought the paper along with a box of 24 Reeves Water Colour Pencils. We went to purchase art materials when we started working on the mandalas. The rest of my art supplies are packed in boxes. And boxes and boxes. I hauled them to the studio last week. But I don’t know what I have. I need to go through them, purge.

It was ybonesy who said that she has art supplies she would not use, even if she could find the time. I feel the same way. When I went to MCAD, I was sure I was going to be able to tackle every art form before I died. But that’s like saying I’ll read all the books I want to before I die. It’s not happening. That reminds me of the Do Or Die lists that ybonesy and I made for that Writing Topic. And that takes my brain to Bucket List, a movie Mom saw about a month ago. What is important to us? What do we want to do before we die?

This is all I ever wanted to do. Write, photograph, be close to my family, have a partner that makes me smile every day, and good loyal friends. Loyalty is important to me. This is something I’ve realized over the last year. I have lost friends. I have gained friends. Isn’t it strange how people come and go, suddenly, and most times with no rhyme or reason. Loyalty. But not at all costs.

There are Crayola colored pencils in a green swoop neck container with a roll top, like a roll-top desk. The roll part of the top is clear and I can see that many of the points need sharpened. The thing about colored pencils is that I love contrast and I can’t seem to find a deep enough value in the tip of a colored pencil. Others are able to achieve dark, dark, blues, crimson reds, and lemony snicket yellow. That’s not a word. Where did it come from?

On the painted living room table there is a navy mug with gold moon, sun, and stars, from the Wedge CoOp on Lyndale. It’s filled with 4 fluorescent highlighters (I use highlighters a lot in writing), a black Uniball Vision (an old favorite), a cool Post-It highlighter, filled with Post-It flags on the other end. I use a lot of Post-It Notes. Did you know the glue came out in 1968 but the Post-It was not mass marketed until 1980.

There is a hot pink Pilot Precise V5, Extra Fine, a Sanford Fine Point Sharpie, an overused emery board that Chaco likes to lick, and a Twist-Erase 0.7 Pentel pencil made in Japan. There is an Olivia pen, a publisher gave to the bookstore where I worked, bright red bottom, clear top with a thick liquid, Olivia floating from top to bottom when I move the pen up and down. Olivia wears a red smock, black and white striped pants, and a black bowtie. Her skin is bright, a fictional pig.

These are my tools of the trade. There is a Mead spiral notebook, 3 yellow legal pads, and a Spiderman folder where I carry all the notes from my red Ravine meetings with ybonesy. It’s thick and full of papers with lines in orange, yellow, and green highlighter. When I read ybonesy’s post on Tools of the Trade, I thought, “I really should give away those strings of beads I bought at BearHawk Indian Store. I should give them to an artist who would appreciate them, a beader.”

Once I thought I would sew. But I am not good at sewing. I usually have a lot of patience. I don’t have it for sewing, knitting, or anything involving thread, needles, or yarn. Strange. Because sewing is the perfect medium for meditation. To keep the hands moving, let the mind get lost, the body ground through the hands.

There’s a Prosperity candle from a Pennsylvania store I went to with Mom last June. The Satya Super Hit – Since 1964 – incense I got that burns long and wild (made by the same people that make Nagchampa and Saibaba). Blue, red, silver, black box, smells good as Italian Roast.

I gave Liz the Goddess Prosperity candle for her birthday. The odor, clean and green. The poem says – “In opening up our hearts to giving and receiving, blessings and gifts come easily. Abundance and joy flow in our life. The Goddess of Prosperity is the embodiment of success and fulfillment.” Prosperity. Giving and receiving. Can’t have one without the other. The art of a craft – not up for trade.

-posted on red Ravine, Wednesday, April 2nd, 2008

-related to Topic post, WRITING TOPIC – TOOLS OF THE TRADE, and posts: PRACTICE – The Art Studio, WRITING TOPIC – REMINGTON’S STUDIO

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