THINGS TO KEEP

 

Some people can enjoy the moment and do not need keepsakes as reminders of their memories. I am not one of them. I may have inherited that trait from my dad. When I first looked through my dad's memorabilia after both parents died, I thought what he left behind was evidence of a man who wanted to achieve recognition. He kept records from an early age, including awards, newspaper articles, photo albums filled with people he knew and places he traveled to, and once he received the recognition, binders full of fan letters.

As a kid, I was encouraged to keep scrapbooks (I think to keep my sister and me out of my mother's hair). The activity became a custom that I've carried in some form throughout my life. Besides the events that went into the scrapbooks up until I graduated from college, I've also kept records of what I eat each day, my weight, blood pressure readings, and several journals full of comments about books I've read. I think of one of my aunts who kept meticulous records of the weather in the middle of Minnesota. As a farming family, those records were important. I can't say the same about my own. They are a habit acquired and never really questioned. They are a moment of silence at the beginning of my day. Some people greet the sun in the morning. My habit is to write down the day and date. My way to acknowledge a new day.

Bill rediscovered a photo album of his ancestors and relatives that I had assembled many years ago from photos and papers handed down from his parents when they moved into a senior living home. Bill, unlike me, is not a saver of mementos, but he has spent time, as we sort through our things, going through this unexpected treasure as well as old yearbooks. We saved all of these things because we had the space and through inertia, but now, finding them again has given us time to reflect on our lives before we pass these treasures on to someone else.

Inspired by a circle. A labyrinth 4 life.
Wander. Wonder. Live.
Life is a series of circles and spirals.
By Martha Slavin

Keeping all the pieces of a life can become a burden. On the other hand, if I hadn't kept some of the scraps of paper, letters she wrote, and her old photo albums, I would not know that my mother tried out for a movie part in Los Angeles or about her young life living in Ohio that she recorded hastily on a piece of scrap paper. Within the photo albums, I found copies of senior class pages from her yearbook. I made copies of those photos on an inkjet printer. I washed the copies with water, which allowed the ink to flow away. What I had left was a bluish-purple faded memory of each photo. 

The young men in the photos would have been the right age to become part of the WWII military. I don't know their personal histories, but I used the photos as a symbol of all the lost boys who go to war. I cut a piece of Hahnemuele printing paper into long strips, scrawled some dry brushstrokes of watercolor across the surface, and glued the photos down. Throughout the book, I wrote a poem about the effects of war on each generation since WWII.

Lost Boys: Lost to real manhood
Off to war
Chanting U.S.A. Stomping cadence.
Brash. Steely-eyed. Bravado.
Immortal, young gods,
Buried in the trenches, in the foxholes,
by one step on an IED
Leaving
Silence
Some return calmed by their generation's balm:
Alcohol. Cocaine. Meth.
Living on the streets.
Forgotten.

I go back and forth about keeping things. Is it a burden or an opportunity? I've come to the conclusion it is both. Most items are opportunities, but only if I can find the time to sit and think about them. Otherwise, they just become part of the stacks of our lives.

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 Norm Eisen's parents told him:

“Your job is not to finish the work—but neither are you, the child of free people, not to do your share.”

SANGUINE OR NOT

Life Lines #2 by Martha Slavin

 An artist friend sent me a square of ArtGraf water-soluble tailor's chalk called Sanguine, a blood red color. It's a beautiful hue, and the chalk can be drawn on its tip to create fine lines or used on its broad edge and scraped across the page to resemble dry dirt, wood, or brick walls. Brushing the marks with some water intensifies the color.

Mark making with an ArtGraf chalk

"Sang" is the French word for blood. The French extended the word into sanguine, which means optimistic. And sang is also found in the word sang-froid (blood-cold) an old version of keeping one's cool. And recently, the French have added the slang term, Le Sang, a phrase that suggests blood is thicker than water, or slightly differently, that friends are like family. In English, sanguine also means cheerfully optimistic, but also indicates a ruddy complexion. MairimeriBlu, an Italian watercolor paint maker, produces a color called Sangue di Drago (Dragon's Blood) that creates a ruddy skin color for watercolor.

I gravitate to this blood-red, rusty-looking color often, whether in watercolor or book-arts, or calligraphy. I choose it along with Aurelin Yellow and Cerulean Blue as my primary colors from which I mix other colors.

Merchant by Martha Slavin

After many weeks, my desk is finally reappearing from under the layers of art supplies that cluttered the surface. While sorting through my art supplies, I haven't had the energy or space to make art. But tomorrow, with a clean work space, I will be taking a color pencil class. I was sent the supply list weeks ago, just after I made a donation of art materials to a local non-profit that provides materials to teachers. I gave away my last box of wax-based color pencils. I figured I didn't need the wax-based ones because when I use colored pencils, I use water-soluble ones and have a jar full of them.  Checking the class supply list the other day, I found the request for either wax- or oil-based colored pencils. I sighed. Oh, well, I told myself the kind I have will have to do. I'm sanguine that what I have will work.

Sanguine colors the X

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One of the best things about knowing talented calligraphers is that, occasionally, when I open our mailbox, I find an envelope in the mail that is as exquisite as this one. Thank you, RM.

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Mark Twain: “To a man with a hammer, everything looks like a nail.”

SHARED VALUES

One of my favorite quotes

 We are seeing the end.

That short sentence stopped me in my tracks as I wrote it. What did I mean? Are we coming to the end of our lives? Have all the chaotic events raining down on our country been halted? Has disrespect for the rule of law won, and is what we know as civilization coming to an end, to be replaced by a cruel, dog-eat-dog world? Those thoughts grew larger and larger as I stopped writing, when I only meant to say that our two-year vagabond quest to find a new home is coming to a close. We are unpacking and sorting the last tidbits. We are doing normal, everyday chores. Art supplies are stored in boxes, writing implements are tucked into drawers, paint jars are bundled into carts, kitchen equipment rests behind cabinet doors. We feel more rested and think of new adventures as we start this new phase of our lives. Still mindful of the news around us, we draw support from friends and let our voices be heard when we can.

Two thought-provoking books

I've picked up The Righteous Mind, a book by Jonathan Haidt, a social psychologist who wrote The Happiness Hypothesis. In this new book, he suggests that we are born with an innate sense of morality and justice, that our normal tendencies for those values rise up when we are confronted with their opposites, that we naturally collect in groups, which can lead us in different directions, either to grow and change or become hide-bound in our beliefs. His thoughts identify much of what we have experienced in the world today. I recall that as a young teacher, my principal reminded me that not everyone shares the same values. I remember being taken aback by that statement, even though I had lived through the 1950s and 1960s, marked by wars and the civil rights movement, and seen tremendous strife between people. I still believed that deep inside, we had the same core values. I was taken aback again when Trump was re-elected. I was confused and stunned by other people's choices. I know we all have the dark side within us, but I thought we had evolved beyond those negative reactions. I was wrong. I need to remind myself of what I hold dear.

Haidt's book reminded me of an exercise I found to determine what I value. The exercise starts with three categories: The Individual, Those Around You, and For the World. I sorted the ideas from most important to least for each category. Like the sentence, "We are seeing the end," I found each phrase had a deep meaning, which made it difficult to put them in order of significance. None of these include the negative values that have risen again. Here are the choices in random sequence:

Justice and morality                Beauty and creativity               Knowledge and truth

Love and compassion              Respect for the environment     Health and well-being

Joy and laughter        Appreciation and contentment         Faith and forgiveness

In what order would you place these concepts? 

Does each category make the order of the concepts different for you?

We are seeing in the world today what we value most.

A PAUSE FOR ALL THINGS ALIVE

Robin's Nest by Martha Slavin

Crows, seagulls, sparrows, pigeons, an occasional hawk, and one robin couple congregate in our neighborhood. The robins chirp at each other with their distinctive cry, perhaps while they are looking for a good nesting site outside our window in the cherry blossom tree, whose leaves have begun to unfurl, the last of the trees in our area to flourish. One morning, a crow swooped down into the courtyard, and the robins took wing and haven't returned.

This morning, we watched as a crow made sweeping circles around the roof and windows of the building across the street. At first, we thought this unusual behavior was the crow having fun, but then the crow descended behind some ducting on the roof, only to appear moments later with two other birds to fly behind another rooftop ledge. A moment of quiet, and then a hawk, a crow's natural enemy, burst out, diving and swinging out of the crows' attack. The hawk rose and flew away with the crows in hot pursuit.

We have Pacific Madrone trees on our block. Around the corner, magnolia trees line the street. The courtyard outside our window is full of Japanese maples, cherry trees, and red maples, which give us color in three seasons and bring birds, including the parrots that have escaped into the wild. We can hear the parrots' raucous chatter but find it hard to see the groups gathered in the dense foliage of the street trees. Occasionally, we enjoy songbird finches trying to find a place in a city that doesn't welcome them.

A ride on the N Judah Muni line from its beginnings at the end of Judah Street in the Sunset District to the Embarcadero gave me a glimpse of the entire city. The Sunset District near the edge of the Pacific Ocean used to be all sand dunes. Builders constructed modest homes in the early twentieth century, and the area continued to be developed until the dunes disappeared. Rolling through the Sunset on the trolley, I saw few streets lined with trees. Without trees, the streets seemed bleak and uninviting in the looming fog. At the end of the Sunset, the N Judah descends into a tunnel. As we moved towards the opening, I felt as if I were on an amusement ride going into another world. When we came out, we were in the Noe Valley/DuBose Triangle area, a section of town filled with tall trees, hills, and well-maintained Victorian homes. At the edge of that area, the N Judah descended again into another tunnel that follows the path of the BART subway line across the downtown section of San Francisco to emerge again into the open at the Embarcadero and the Ferry Building with views of the Bay, container ships, and sailboats. The N Judah continues to the CalTrains Depot, but I got off at the Brannan stop, a short distance from our new home.

Today, as we had a picnic lunch near South Park, I watched a yellow and black Swallowtail flit from one tree to another across the street. The butterfly reminded me of a poem I wrote after seeing another Swallowtail cross a busy street:

A swallowtail

At a crosswalk

On a six-lane street

Fluttered across with the light.

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On Mother's Day, to honor my mother, long gone now, I am including two of her art pieces:  a flower drawing in pencil and an oil painting in the Impressionist style, of a girl fixing her hair. I was the model for this painting. It took long hours of my sitting still, holding my hair above my face, but gave the two of us time to be together.

by Esther B. Heimdahl

Flowers by Esther B. Heimdahl

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 "I am thinking of artists such as Frida Khalo, Corita Kent or Louise Bourgeois, and many others. I hope with all my heart that contemporary art can open our eyes, helping us to value adequately the contribution of women, as co-protagonists of the human adventure."  Pope Francis  

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