Into the New

This is of course the Southern Oracle (Auricle?) from the Neverending Story. One may only pass this gate with heartfelt confidence in one's worth and purpose.

It's been a big year.
I moved myself, the Kid, the Mister and his Kid and 40 feet of U-Haul to a new house in a new state.

my moving parts were very tired

A new job found me and offered better pay than anything previous to go and take pictures of houses, and measure how big they are, and put checkmarks in little boxes for Asphalt Shingles and Brick Veneer. Sometimes I even get to climb a ladder for better views of the roof.
I can tell it's a good job because all the dogs I've met have been neutered, and the pit bull even gave me kisses.

And I finished another painting, which I will post next year.

Happy 2014

A Long Year's Walk

My Dad had the recent good fortune and perseverance to turn 67 years old. As he did last year, he commemorated the auspicious event by completing his 67th ascent of the local Mount Moooooo (there may be an A in there, somewhere) and raising a toast

To Old Guys

 I made a picture about it with colored pencils and sent it to him. Customs rumpled it, rude bastards.

Long Bone, 18x24

 In anticipation of many years' more journeys.
Based on this:

Our lives shine for all to see.

Petroglyph

From the Pueblo people
(I read it in a book once. Or mostly just looked at the pictures)

It means, to leave the old village and establish a new settlement.

I would read it from right to left: the old village is rounded, familiar, woven with paths we can walk half-dreaming; the new place has corners, edges, to navigate it we must turn sharply and learn new angles.

For my Dad, who is starting on a new journey.

YOU ARE HERE

Yo Rethra! Quit piddlin' around, it's time to GO

This is my last week of employment at The Giant Kidney.
I leave behind a real Ostrich feather duster, a clock on every wall and a dear janitor friend, the lady in the leopard-print hat and an individual whom I know only as "Phlegmy". All in all, some of the nicest people I've ever cleaned up after.
 On to bigger and better things!

Further Adventures in Janitation

So the Spay/Neuter clinic I'd been working at Is No More.
Now I have a job at a different clinic, which I'll call the Giant Kidney. I had applied as a phlebotomist, but the Universe had better things in store for me. I have returned to my roots.

the uniform

 The Giant Kidney is new and shiny (read: easy to scrub) with a pleasantly repetitive floor plan. By the time my work starts, nearly everyone else has gone home. I enjoy the silence. This is the sort of work that occupies the hands and body while leaving the mind free to roam.

self-explanatory!

 The rate of pay, incidentally, is a mere 25cents less than the highest hourly wage I've ever received in the state of misery Missouri Arkansas.  This job appeared the very same week the last one ended, and will keep me usefully employed until the next thing comes along (enigmatic smile).

largess from my previous stint as a
restroom maintenance technician

"The work to do is to continue doing the work"

Recently

English muffin injury (I punched the toaster)

Getting by with help from a friend

My ship came in

Home sweet hideaway

Mom made a friend

Be Excellent to Each Other

 I actually went out into public yesterday, in support of one of the causes I click for so passionately on the internet. I even met people I knew from real life, in the long long ago.

And a merry time was had by all.

an expedition to the Museum

my first in many moons.
I had been to this particular one about a year ago, a week before it actually opened because i can't be bothered to verify such things before excursioning.
So. Loaded up the new saramobile with the Bean and myself and we voyaged to the Wal-Mart Cultural Manifestations for Proletarian Consumption Compound.
It's free don'tcha know!
But since you all are scattered far and wide across the internets and may not be within journeying distance I took pictures which I hereby share.

Big Metal Tree

The Museum

a model of the Museum made of toothpicks

Blue Morpho

I forget what these were called

What a large head you have!

Settling differences of opinion with a spirited game of Rock, Paper, Scissors

Bear beats scissors

Touchdown! |
(I know nothing of sports)

it's OK if the brushstrokes show

"Why cain't ya jes' paint sump'n Purdy, like Flaaars?"

these things are familiar

Big Scary Factory

Those PBJ's are good for the biceps

Maxfield Parrish(!)

Lotus of Divinity

the NO SMOKING signs were very prominent

the token "well I could do THAT!" piece

I saw this in a book once

 ....at which point my camera batteries ran out.
But in the spirit of sharing treasures with a wider audience, here's one of my own favorite things:  A fish-mouthed vessel, made by an artist who imprinted its ceramic surface with fossilized shells that are part of the dirt in Texas. Most recently used to keep spare change.

sufficient unto the day are the funds thereof

Thanksgiving next week...

when I tell stories I tell them like this

This Shit Is Bananas

extend a Hand to a Friend in Kindness
for Life is a Far Journey across the Howling Desert

But seriously, great gift for the Gwen Stefani fan in your life. Buy it HERE

This is the first thing I've painted in many a day. 

Been slightly distracted by The Best Boyfriend Ever

he's actually much taller than this

and my new job, one whole day a week at the Spay & Neuter clinic. I wasn't sure I wanted back into non-profit, but hey. It addresses the source of so much suffering. And, the people there are not guano loco!

Rumination on the Shape of things

iud

broken spoons and pictures from the informative brochure, coathanger (of course), floss, wishbone, indecipherable plastic bits. Probably a fishhook in there somewhere.

Old dead roses and strange new blooms.


token offering of the sexual parts of plants

The pitcher has a crack in it where the light comes in.



I found this on F*cebook, before it infested my internets with a nasty virus - the kind that eats money - LAME. I'm back now.

“Stories are masks of God.


That's a story, too, of course. I made it up, in collaborations with Joseph Campbell and Scheherazade, Jesus and the Buddha and the Brothers Grimm.


Stories show us how to bear the unbearable, approach the unapproachable, conceive the inconceivable. Stories provide meaning, texture, layers and layers of truth.

Stories can also trivialize. Offered indelicately, taken too literally, stories become reductionist tools, rendering things neat and therefore false. Even as we must revere and cherish the masks we variously create, Campbell reminds us, we must not mistake the masks of God for God.

So it seems to me that one of the most vital things we can teach our children is how to be storytellers. How to tell stories that are rigorously, insistently, beautifully true. And how to believe them.”
― Melanie Tem, The Man on the Ceiling

the Storyteller



Minutiae

more paintings to come! Much thanks to my friend Nina for sharing my art with a wider part of the world.

all the fashionable blogs say ombre nails are "in the moment",

which sounds like the place to be

clematis



Lots of flowers around here. Some old girl keeps planting them.

Mom likes playing in the dirt...

...but hates to be photographed.



That's almost the face she made when Kid & I conspired to dump a large number of maple seeds on her, from the roof. She also made a sound which I'm unable to properly describe, except to say it made us giggle.

A dramatic reenactment of these golden wings slicing spirals thru the air, without indignant shriek:

That's my mop bucket cuz I'm cool like that. The dog is another story.