“A Horse walks into a bar and the Bartender says…” – I’ve been using the silliness of really bad groaner jokes to help offset the unrelenting emptiness of loss. It works, too! And this isn’t my photograph, I set up the exposure and handed my backup camera to my client ( thanks, Cheryl).
He was better after I showed him that his left side was best!
Cooking for one is easy, with leftovers. So often, it’s just a warm up.
Long ago, home at 2 or 3 AM, after a part time gig with a client who was willing to pay me for tech stuff nobody else would touch, trying to keep a blown up life together, I’d find a note, about dinner, warm in the oven. And tonight, putting that into the oven to warm, I was back in Paris and her smile.
Today, my eMail had an announcement of a new record. Yes, I’m ancient. La chanson des vieux amants.
Musee Rodin is – wonderful. There is a terra cotta bust on the second floor that had me remembering to breathe. Paris, Ballet and Music – just take me now Great Spirit
I made this photograph a dozen years ago. The performance was part of a music festival headlined by the Brussels Chamber Orchestra. My enthusiasm and Cary Citizen Press Pass allowed me to spend a lot of time in Cary Arts Center with them. A collaboration with NC Opera brought this Countertenor to a performance.
I’m a rough old cob but I had no idea a human voice could – you had to be there.
The gorgeous canopy of green above my townhome, provided by mature Red and White Oak, Beech and Long Leaf Pine, provides peace and serenity in a cacophonic world.
Except every !@#$% Thursday, all day, including after 5 PM, when the hideous drone of Stihl Backpack Blowers pierce my tinnitus like fingernails on a blackboard.
I’m a dog, locked in a room with a running vacuum cleaner. Except the dog isn’t paying HoA fees. God forbid, a leaf on a lawn!
Selling and moving soon and I will NOT miss Thursdays! Mother Nature knows a lot more than HoA’s. Ms Renkl has it right.
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The First Thing We Do, Let’s Kill All the Leaf Blowers
Nearly everything about how Americans “care” for their lawns is deadly, but these machines exist in a category of environmental hell all their own.
This came to mind after a telephone call today. It was a group sing, played on cassette tape, traveling on I-71, in transit on visitation weekends. There is great delicious naughtiness when young boys can sing, out loud “And kiss my ass goodbye!”
Except for it atop my HoA directed six inch thick, leaf free, pine straw a la golf course sterile landscaping in front of my town home, this one looked just like the one that greeted me upon arrival home from Saturday shopping chores.
And it held the same pose during four trips past it with groceries. Okay, there was a stop at Total Wine and that trip wasn’t groceries.
Having stowed all away, I peeked later and saw it gone. So with some outdoor leisure time before evening meal prep, I have a story.
Somewhere in the very early 1960’s, there were some large open fields in easy walking distance of home. Before the developers scraped them clean for sub-divisions. In an after school afternoon, I found and picked up by hand, a beautiful Blue Racer Snake, probably 3+ ft long. I draped it around my neck and handled it gently as it explored it’s new and temporary environment.
My guess is, it was about 4:30 in the afternoon, before Dad got home from work. Mom had dinner simmering on the stove as I came through the kitchen. I walked through that now impossibly small bungalow to where she was trying to nap. Her days were long, something I only realized much later.
In the dim light of the bedroom, sunlight diffused and reduced by a window shade, I proudly and brightly said “Hey Mom, look what I’ve got!” and I lifted the snake for her to marvel at.
She opened one eye and I swear “Levitated”. My reptilian conquest was immediately returned to its site of capture.
This is not my photograph. Wish it was. Whoever made it, knew their stuff, as did she. It’s the cover photograph of the Shirley Horn Album/CD “May The Music Never End”.
I’ve written here before, about my admiration of her music. Which I’m listening to now, between dinner prep chores and refilling my wine glass. Grace and medicine for the wounded heart.
On the Album/CD, she tortures you with relentless, hard cadence on “Everything Must Change”. Until melodic relief. And gentle heart.
Aware of the news, I confess to have never heard a Taylor Swift song. I wonder if she ever listened to Ms Horn. And so it goes.
I don’t know what year this was, image metadata was washed out when I made the Jpeg. And I’m not about to abandon the comfort of a gorgeous spring day to go back indoors to dig into an image archive. What I’m certain of, it’s a dress rehearsal at the Cary Arts Center.
The instructor moved away later, from a lobby full of hugs and tears. Years after, while I still had a LinkedIn account, she was very kind in response to my request for pre-ballet dance school recommendation in the greater Atlanta area.
As an artist, this was my Superbowl Fifty Yard Line. Why I made photographs.
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