Celebrating a Life(er)

black swallowtail lifer

bedecked in gold rings, as you once were

follows me as I get out of the cab

riding on my pant leg, resting on my hand

I see you

your metamorphosis is

 complete and spectacular

you are so beautiful

RIP Shirley May.

My Side of the Mountain

Mount Sheridan as seen from west of Meers, OK

This is the view this morning from the little cabin I am renting (for the second time) outside of the Wichita Mountains Wildlife Refuge.  This octagonal-shaped cabin is a magical place - a balmy breeze wraps around it constantly and seems to speak in the hushed voices of the ancients.  Across the street, about 200 yards away, there is not a leaf moving and the temperature is a good fifteen degrees warmer.  In the middle of July in western Oklahoma I sleep here, buried under blankets, with one window open and the air conditioner turned off - a delightful surprise for certain - but uncanny and unheard of.  

This peak and this place call to me much like Pedernal near Ghost Ranch did for the thirteen years I lived in Santa Fe.  It seems like wherever you go - there you are.  But with one big difference - this is right in my backyard - and this is home.

To see the sky in other parts of the world today 

go here:

Trip to Bountiful

Dee Nash is a woman I have admired for almost three years - ever since finding her extraordinary Oklahoma garden blog - Red Dirt Ramblings just weeks before moving back.  An artist of the first rate - Dee uses a canvas measured in acres rather than inches and for paint - she uses lilies and roses of the most extraordinary hues.  Her work is nothing short of a masterpiece.  Her magnificent garden is like a poem - an beautiful ode to the cross timbered hills and prairie lands of central Oklahoma suffused with a lilting English cottage accent.

I first met Dee in the comment section of her blog shortly after I found it.  She is a gifted writer who is incredibly generous with her words and her readers.  In a bold move two years ago - I knocked on her Facebook door and she let me in.  It's been fun watching her world unfold in photos and words and mutual friends that we both share from our years growing up in the same part of Oklahoma.  It's also been exciting watching Dee bloom from a local garden expert to a writer of a hard-earned and well-deserved increasing national prominence.

Last week, I walked out of the virtual world and knocked on Dee's real front door - some 20 miles from my own.  It was like seeing an old friend - smiles and hugs made timeless by the internet.  Say what you will about this strange virtual world we now live in -- but I have made some extraordinary acquaintances through electronic media that I treasure in real time - incredible people whose paths I would have not likely crossed otherwise -- and Dee is one of them.

Still Life with Annabelle
(Hydrangea aborescens 'Annabelle')

Come take a walk with me and marvel at the magnificent splendor of Oklahoma's most prominent garden writer -- and then come meet Dee at her award-winning blog where she so generously shares the fruits of her labor and enables us all to become better stewards of this place we call home.

Chasing Picasso

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Are we to paint what's on the face, what's inside the face, or what's behind it? 

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My mother said to me, "If you are a soldier, you will become a general. If you are a monk, you will become the Pope." Instead, I was a painter, and became Picasso. 

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One must act in painting as in life, directly. 

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Give me a museum and I'll fill it.

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It took me four years to paint like Raphael, but a lifetime to paint like a child. 

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Others have seen what is and asked why. I have seen what could be and asked why not. 

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The artist is a receptacle for emotions that come from all over the place: from the sky, from the earth, from a scrap of paper, from a passing shape, from a spider's web. 

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We don't grow older, we grow riper. 

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There is no abstract art. You must always start with something. Afterward you can remove all traces of reality. 

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Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone.

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“Each second we live is a new and unique moment of the universe, a moment that will never be again. And what do we teach our children? We teach them that two and two make four, and that Paris is the capital of France. When will we also teach them what they are? We should say to each of them: Do you know what you are? You are a marvel. You are unique. In all the years that have passed, there has never been another child like you. Your legs, your arms, your clever fingers, the way you move. You may become a Shakespeare, a Michelangelo, a Beethoven. You have the capacity for anything. Yes, you are a marvel. And when you grow up, can you then harm another who is, like you, a marvel? You must work, we must all work, to make the world worthy of its children.”

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“I'd like to live as a poor man with lots of money.”

“Who sees the human face correctly: the photographer, the mirror, or the painter?”

“Inspiration exists, but it has to find us working.”

“I do not seek. I find.”

Some painters transform the sun into a yellow spot; others transform a yellow spot into the sun.

The world today doesn't make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?

When you come right down to it all you have is yourself. The sun is a thousand rays in your belly. All the rest is nothing.

It is your work in life that is the ultimate seduction.

Art washes away from the soul the dust of everyday life.

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Art is the lie that makes us realize truth. 

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