Visual art news, views, reviews & calendars
in Dallas, Texas, USA
| Home | Join us | Resources | SSiT | Lit | Search | Ads | Submissions |
Visual art news, views, reviews & calendars
in Dallas, Texas, USA
| Home | Join us | Resources | SSiT | Lit | Search | Ads | Submissions |
Joe Stanco's DARts Membership page
I spent three days in Fairfield by myself last week writing, walking and thinking. Among other writings, I kept a journal, mostly just to record weather, animals, etc., but as usual my mind drifted other ways. You may or may not be interested, but if not, feel free to delete. Those of you who have been to Jim's land might appreciate some of this. So either delete and enjoy or read and enjoy.
Joe
After they all left, I took a long nap — exhausted from partying and the thought of writing again. When I awoke, it was cloudy, breezy and cooler. I walked around outside for a while, nowhere in particular. Then I rolled a fat one, popped a beer and sat on the edge of the woods above the second pond, watching the gray clouds thicken in the southeast.
Hunger was starting to burble down below, so I lit the little gray grill that Diane had given Mae when she gave me the black one which I left at the coast for future trips. After the coals were gray I threw on chicken wings with Mae's rub.
They were spatting nicely when all of a sudden sheets of rain began to blow from the east. I ran inside to watch from the windows. Once in a while, I would peep out to check on the grill. It was chugging along, spitting clouds of smoke from the center hole where rain flew in. Quickly I opened it and turned the wings. They were almost done. The rain came harder, great gusts whipping across the meadow, beautiful to watch and satisfying for the land. I pulled the wings off and picked the meat off as I sat by the front window. My belly quietened.
As the rain tapered off, I went outside to sit on the front porch and smoke a cigarette. Patches of blue were scattered to the north and west but the east was still black. The fire had died, so I relit it to cook my steak. Then I went for a walk towards the meadow.
There were birds everywhere: flocks of geese and ducks honking high above, hawks and vultures floating, small coveys of chirping sparrows, cardinals swooping low, and many others I didn't have a clue to. There was a veritable cacophony of songs, calls, squeaks, responses, and high piercing trills. It was like a symphony by John Cage.
I walked hard, without stopping, getting aerobic and breathing hard and deep. It felt good — the oxygen was re-vitalizing my tired, alcohol-soaked blood. I stopped briefly to gaze across the deep draw beyond the meadow, then puffed my way back past the barn to the house, where I checked the grill then sat down on the porch to await sunset.
It turned out to be quite a show.
The western horizon was a blazing field of deep, deep red-orange with patches of violet under the floating clouds, while towards the zenith clumps of gray leaped out of a cold blue background. The east was still black flecked with swatches of silver rain. Occasional flying drops would splat the porch.
Gradually the red-orange shrank to gold. Time shifted into slow drive. I seemed to be floating in a sea of sensation among the rich colors. I sat and let the fire burn out a second time.
Oh, well there's always later.
"Woe to those who deny the world right before their eyes"
Thinking about that line as I watch a quiet sunset tonight, very different from last night's whirling rain and violent colors at sunset. I recollect what I have seen so far.
Small changes, things a person not looking for might not notice. A new mushroom in the lawn, as big as a saucer, no doubt springing from the available moisture. Mae had set out a banana to rot and draw butterflies. It does, along with wasps. They seem to take turns, like buffet diners along a line, each knowing when the line moves. I set out some grapes last evening before the rain, to see what they would attract. Nothing yet ( that I have seen ) but most were gone today when I checked. A leaf falls from the oak by the fence. I think about change.
The world in front of me here, just like the world of Michele's beds or the back yard or the stark woods I drove on today to get within range of a microwave tower to call home and work, just like any world of natural life, it is in constant change. Metamorphosis. The ebb and tide of time, seasonal, circular but different. Worlds within worlds, as the Hindu say, but small variations. Are you more like or more different from your parents? How about the wasp sucking on the banana? Is he unique in some way? Yes, he is here, right now, right here. That is what makes him unique.
Bassho's frog:
Still quiet pond —
Frog jumps in:
Plop!Suddenly, plop! The world is different. Evolution in action.
I just stepped off the back porch to pee. It was 12:43 on Tuesday. As the gush steamed from me, I heard a yelping squeal. Then a chorus of yelps. Then, one long quivering howl followed by such a racket as you never heard. Coyotes, no doubt. Close too. Under a mile. The moon is waxing, just at quarter, so they must be warming up for the big show. In just over a week they'll have the full mama and all rights to it. Anyway, they intruded on my thoughts about change. You never know.
Before that I was reading John Graves, Goodbye to a River, a book that always renews me. I opened a random page: "The Brazos belonged to me that afternoon, all of it. It really did." Yep. Could'na said it better myself. Right now I have what is in front of me. And when I try to transform it into words, it somehow changes. There's that word again. I'm throwing the I Ching every second and it's hard to keep up. Another leaf just fell. Another bird just traced a curve across the blue horizon, and that intersected the path of a hawk diving somewhere over the hill. See what I mean? How can you keep track of all that, let alone in words?
John Graves is an observer, like Thoreau, like Peter Matthiesson, like Annie Dillard. He watches what presents itself in front of his eyes. And he camps. I start flashing back to campo stancouts over the years. Lake Travis. Lake Jacksonville ("we ain't got a hair on our ass if we don't go there right now!"), the gentle bend in the Oklahoma river where we pitched tent to discover we were in a field of cattle droppings, the national forest in East Texas where Philip's hair froze to the tent in a blue norther, Cove Lake in Arkansas when the Stanco boys tried to hike up Magazine Mountain with Jordan the nurse only to lose their way and trudge back hangdog behind her when she found the ten-mile hike back around, the San Saba bend of the Colorado River with a lost canyon and we spotted an eagle's nest in the bluff above a spring-fed pool. I could go on, but the point is well, I lost that point, other than beautiful recollections. I do love to camp, and I do love to observe. So it is good to be here, right now, with this plop!
A quiet afternoon so far, hot and sticky, but clouds are building again in the east. If this holds, we'll have another evening shower. Jim will be so happy — and I won't have to water all his tender new trees and bushes. It won't be enough to make a difference in the new pond; he'll have to hope for fall and winter rains to fill that hole. Meanwhile, it's red mud with a few crawfish holes.
I haven't thought much about my illness out here. It seems counter-productive, or maybe I'm just in denial. When I walk hard through the meadows I feel so much better. I'll have to keep an eye on the weather to dodge squalls this evening, but my heart will thank me.
I always thought I would die by my skin, melanoma my constant companion, so to have my heart go bad was a shock. Now I feel it each beat, thump, thump, whereas I used to feel my skn, it's condition, its color, its texture. Which organ, inner or outer?
The burned trees across the road from last summer's killer heat ( nobody knows how the fire started ( though there are rumors of broken bottles reflecting light ) ), the trees are like candelabras against the western sky. One in particular two nights ago seemed a jack-o-lantern against the wild orange sky. A crow caws from a blackened branch in the dead pine forest. He seems to be mocking, but that's always the way of crows, squawking just to disrupt your chain of thought precious as it is. Damn crows!
The locusts had unexpectedly chorused up with their rolling chirrups piercing the still air earlier than usual this evening, before the rain, when I walked in the meadow with a light breeze rustling my arm hairs so I knew my skin was OK for the moment. A whipping flutter of dove wings from the thorn tree disrupt thought but that's OK, back to the moment. I am walking along the mowed path towards the meadow where I will pop the bb gun at a distant branch across the wide valley below. It is a gorgeous vista, taunting with even more beauty over the next ridge. This is good.
I don't mean good in the moral sense, which we can certainly get obsessed with. I mean good: it's good to be alive, to be part of this, to hear the coon dogs begin to bay across the ridge. I walk back to the house hearing their agitated, deep-throated yowling. They belong to the old man down the dirt road; tonight they seem agitated, and a strange screeching sets them yelping even more. Heck if I know what made the sound. It's like nothing I ever heard.
One of life's little mysteries, like where the gray fox came from that stole my cooking chicken on the Rio Frio when I was trying to write about Theresa. The world seems always to interrupt. Rude!
Anyway, the rain has finally stopped and I'm going to sit outside: a fine Texas summer with lovely clouds, fine sunsets, and a temperature bearable by a native.
Joe Stanco's
DARts Membership page
since
May 31 2005
Dallas Arts Revue needs
you, too.
Support
DARts and get
your own
two pages of web space
to show off your art,
prose or poetry.