It’s been very cold for a few days, and today I just didn’t feel like venturing very far from home.
Fortunately, there are plenty of lovely colors right outside our door! The leaves, before they turn to mush, what we call “ leaf jam”, make a mighty pretty carpet.
Our gardeners blew tons of leaves onto the parkway, where they just sit and look great.
And, looking carefully, I caught this perfect leaf perched in a bush. How can we mourn for summer when we have this beauty?
Leading up to the second election of Donald Trump, I was feeling anxious. What would a second Trump term mean for the country? Our foreign policy? Our civil rights? How would we viewed by the rest of the world?
As always, I turned to “making stuff” to cope. I chose this tiny 1948 atlas, which Auntie Bridgett had found in a teeny free library when we first moved to Portland. Now, I saw it as a place to put my anxiety about the.world’s future.
I dug into my collage words box and in an old “French phrase a day” calendar, found just what I needed.
“It’s discouraging.” “You’d think it’s a cult.” “We could go someplace else.” Yes, maybe we could.
I tried to stay in the same color family as the atlas itself, stenciling and stamping, as I created images that expressed my anxiety.
But after a few days of cutting, pasting and realizing who our new President was, I realized that my ‘coping’ mechanism was making me feel worse, by focusing on the awful helplessness. I was in fight or flight mode, and because of family obligations here, we can’t “fly” at the moment. So I needed to think about what I could do to fight, here and now. Again, I found phrases to express myself.
“Calm yourself.” “Don’t cry”.
Of course, the words alone won’t fix anything. I need to, as Mr. Rogers advised, look for the helpers. I can engage with local charities and national groups like the ACLU to make a positive difference in the lives of people who will feel the brunt of Mr. Trump’s announced plans.
And realizing I can do that has been very good for my mental health.
We have a lot of rainy days in our forecast, so we have decided to just go for walks, knowing we are going to get wet. The grey cloudy light makes the pictures darker than usual, so they look almost magical.
We walked around the park, amazed at the carpet of leaves and the thousands yet to fall. The giant ginkgo tree stays yellow for a week or so, and will drop all its leaves almost overnight.
It was so dark at 1 o’clock in the afternoon that the park lights had come on.
Bridgett got very engrossed in looking at a pair of squirrels chasing each other around the trees. I’m not sure if they were fighting or flirting, but they were so busy they didn’t even notice us.
This tall oak will hold onto its fall leaves for months, until it is ready to spout the green leaves of spring.
Knowing that spring is many long wet months away, I may need to carry the sunshine inside me.
My buddy Cynthia and I headed downtown last week to our Portland Art Museum. The remodeling work is still going on, so floor space is limited, but what they have on display is really interesting.
Upstairs, there is a collection called Psychedelic. Mostly, these are posters for rock concerts in San Francisco in the mid to late 1960s, when I was too young to go to rock concerts. Still, I knew the posters were cool even then.
Groups like The Byrds, Moby Grape and The Jefferson Airplane gave concerts at the Filmore Theater, and posters like these made sure everyone knew this was The Happening Place. We enjoyed the incredible colors, and wondered how they would react under black light.
There were also mannequins with fashions from the era standing about. Mini skirts in metallics and wild colors took me right back my days as a wanting-to-be-cool pre-teen.
Downstairs was a collection of photos taken by a very young Paul McCartney when the Beatles were on their first tour of America.
Since I was all of eight years old, I remember the mood of the time very well. Any news about the group was BIG news, and their music was in all of our ears.
Considering the frenzied energy that went wherever the Beatles did, Paul’s photos capture a more playful, relaxed mood.
Cynthia and I chatted about all sorts of things (as we always do), as we looked and remembered our own 60s journeys.
And when our tummies were empty and our feet were tired, we headed past a leafy church for lunch at McMenamin’s.
The leaves in our neighborhood just keep getting prettier! As one tree goes bare, another bursts out in orange and red.
This is a picture of Morrison, between 33rd and 34th Avenue, just down the block. Every year at this time, it becomes covered with this perfect canopy. Everytime I walk home from the market, it takes my breath away.
Along all the streets of the neighborhood, the poplars stand out like popsicles.
And when the sun decides to come out, the back lighting really makes it special.
I know the leaves won’t last forever; enjoy them while you can!
Once the collage bug gets me, I sink in real deep. Besides doing collage with poetry, I have started making postcards again.
I make them pretty quickly, because when my brain is in the mood, the pictures come to hand and go together like lightning.
The only problem is, I can’t always think of who might enjoy the images. Some of them are pretty weird.
For you, dear Liza, I always seem to find some way to “improve” a landscape.
One of these is coming your way, and the other is going to my dear friend Richard in Salinas.
Making art just for the sake of making art, for the joy of laying down color and pattern and the satisfaction it brings, has been such a revelation for me.
Once you get past “Yes, but what’s it FOR?”, life is good.
I have been taking a break from collage for a while, doing embroidery and other things. But this last week, I had a chance the chance to sit in on a poetry meeting with my poet friend, Kitty Petruccelli, and poet January Gill O’Neil.
I knew I’d want to keep my eyes and hands busy while I listened, so I chose some acrylics in colors that seemed to go together. Then I grabbed some pictures and words out of my collage box, mostly just taking what caught my eye.
As January and Kitty talked about Poetry, the American South, and Emmet Till, I laid down some background lines and smudges. I used my old California drivers License to scrape some purple on. As the conversation touched on concerns about life in America under Donald Trump, and my scrapes became a bit more frantic.
I found this woman’s face in the same colors, and liked her half puzzled, half panicked expression.
She needed more contrast, so a Posca paint pen helped out with that. It also helped add some interest to the swoops and corners.
A scrap of singed paper and words of dark times came to hand… “Before the Nazis invaded”.
And as the poetry talk finished up, I laid down the words “Laissez nous tranquille”, which means “Leave us in Peace” and added some tiny splatters.
Thanks, Kitty and January, for a poetic, artsy, emotionally-coping sort of morning.
The election of Donald Trump as President of the U.S. has me worried for many reasons. I worry how a Presidency founded on greed, anger, misogyny, and racism will effect our country.
I worry about how people’s bodily autonomy (their right to be in charge of their own body) will be affected. Will my grandchildren be able to get the health care they need? Or will their rights be taken away because they violate some else’s religious beliefs?
I am also worrying about how these laws will affect my trans friends. Again, this is a matter of bodily autonomy. Do people get to decide with their doctors which medications or surgeries they need to be healthy? Or will their health care be declared illegal?
Talking to my friend Misha, I have learned that many trans people are needing to move from their home states, where this sort of care is under threat, to places where it is available. Trans folks also need legal services to change their names on documents. All this is expensive.
If you are worried too, and want to help but don’t know where to start, Misha works with a group called Outside In. The link to one of their fund raising sites is right here.
With a nice damp Fall, mushrooms are doing very well here in Portland.
Today, I walked around Lone Fir Cemetery. The leaves, the dead, and the damp combine to create some real beauties.
I am not an expert in fungi and don’t know the names of any of these. The only thing I know about wild mushrooms is to NOT eat them…. Unless you are properly trained.
But I am not shy about getting down on my tummy to take some close-ups! Aren’t these beautiful?
Someone picked this mushroom before I got there, and laid it on top of a grave stone.
This batch of tissue- thin mushrooms was surrounded by quite a busy swarm of gnats, so I decided I was about done, took my picture quickly and headed off.
Our nighttime temperatures are heading toward freezing, and the Hundred Acre Wood is finally changing color.
The lanky larch is getting yellow and losing its needles.The evergreen juniper stays green, of course. And the Japanese maple, Toranaga-sama, is getting red on his lower leaves.
Because the nights are so cold, we have brought all the plants up by the house. The acacia’s red blooms look so pretty with the red leaves!
And when you lean over and see them from above, it’s even better. The moss sure looks happy, right?
Sometime this winter I will scissor train the maple and the larch, and trim up the juniper. I can’t wait until spring when it all starts over again.
Dear Liza 