TRAVEL: Palo Alto, A Family Wedding

Fogarty Winery, Woodside, CA

Matt McLean and Lisa Chen’s wedding

We drove to Palo Alto to be guests at John’s cousin Star’s child (Matt).  Star is one of three sisters: Lisa and Judith are the others.  John grew up with them, as did his sister Katharine, who is here too.  Also Dayton and Laura and their children, Dayton Palmer and Ginny, and Tessa Harbor, Lisa’s lovely daughter, whose wedding we attended 3 years ago.  The Adamson sisters grew up in an activist East Coast intellectual home.

 Star married Kenny, an African American man she’d met in high school.  Their 3 children, Matt, Josh, and Emily, are extra-ordinarily talented, handsome, and intelligent young people. Kenny and Star were divorced when the children were teenagers.  A few years later, she had a serious stroke at about age 54, and is now in a wheelchair life-bound.

 An old lover returned and began to care for her, Archie, an amazing and full-of-grace occurrence - then Archie had a stroke, too, and so Judith and Lisa began to care for Star and Archie, and a foster child Star had picked up along the way.

Star has recovered her speech and most mental faculties, but has processing and attention issues.  To see her at age 52 with her life in such vertigo makes me urgently bless each day I wake in health and vigor to begin anew. 

Star's  eldest son, Matt, married Lisa Chen, his long time girlfriend.  They met at Stanford as freshmen, and now it’s 10 year later.  These fine young people work at bettering humanity in medical technology design and world public health, and their love is passionate, young, strong, and joyous.  

Star made a toast that she stumbled badly over but which only made the moment more poignant.  I felt tears running down my face and then when they danced, Star leaning trustfully upon his shoulder, shuffling her feet to turn and follow her son’s lead, they began again.  

Judith, aunt to the groom, performed the wedding ceremony.  She will return to upstate New York this year to care for Star.

Lisa, another sister/aunt, is an artist/activist in upstate New York. I enjoyed talking with her, we are both very interested in studio work, and that makes for an animated exchange.  

Katharine, John’s sister, is back in Berkeley after a stop-over in New Canaan to supervise/visit Lib, John’s mother.  She too works diligently, supervising their rapidly aging/deteriorating mother’s needs and care. 

She is a remarkable woman of many accomplishments, polished, intellectually and aesthetically few people’s equal, always interesting and thoughtful to talk to. 

I am finding that I enjoy myself and the places I go now so much.  So much has fallen away, so much remains.

It used to mean so much to me what all thought of me.  Now a sea change - again.  It seems to no longer concern me that people are impressed with me.  I have settled on some things - that most people care little about art or others, or about me, anyway, and that’s OK.  I have myself now, and have no need to seek acceptance.  Since KF and I fell out, I have become free - to please myself - as Rick Nelson sang in “Garden Party”.  

It also doesn’t matter to me any longer that my painting will be disposed of after my death.  I only wish to do it for myself now, in a new and pure spirit and intention that I’ve discovered - as if I’d brushed away enough dust, or mined it, - it was waiting for me to find, I think. 

ART: Painting Landscape Now: D. Flloimibi

Thursday, August 30, 2012 –  

Painting Landscape - D Florimbi

Cinematic, photographic, this paintings’s composition is able to visually disturb somatic orientation  and create the anticipation one experiences when about to crest a narrow highway after climbing a steep grade  - what is waiting for me? 

The Unknown,  New experience, the Future; but peripheral sightlines are  severely compressed, creating stress because one can’t see forever, after all - suggesting existential subjectivity. Is this a plane window, a porthole, or an emergence from a womb/tunnel? 

But one is called, beckoned - there is a sense of urgency:  first to pause and experience a sense of great wonder, to mark the exquisite moment, and then one must take the steps - there is no choice but to go on. 

Once or twice at mass I have felt “called”; called upon, designated, singled out to comprehend that I must go alone.  The place I was to enter is beautiful, severe, alone, distanced - much sacrifice but the reward is authentic and full integrity of spirit and character, and the ability to bear the knowledge of my certain death and to live fully and compassionately with this, my only promise, my only comfort. 

But there will be beauty, always, surpassing, bountiful, endless beauty to attend, the other compensation.  Well, the security of knowing that the veils of ignorance and denial can be unloosed to face the void with quietude and peace.

Characterized by Donald Kuspit, one of my favorite critics, as a “twentieth century visual thinker”, - what does that mean, that he’s dated? - Florimbi also paints erotically charged figures with existential dread read into the imagery.

But I like these dramatic landscapes - their irony about American land and landscape genres, encroaching civilization, tourism. 

ART: Jennifer Lee, Ceramics

Thursday, August 23, 2012 – Page 1 

Jennifer Lee, Ceramic Artist 

“Breathtaking in their simplicity, Lee’s pots don’t merely illustrate conditions of nature but elegantly, gracefully manifest them.”

Leah Ollman, The Los Angeles Times

These are the most shibui ceramics I’ve ever seen - they outdo the Japanese in their elegance and subtlety.  Makes me want to change my whole palette to paint in these understated lovely tones.

THEATER: Red, starring Albert Molina, a play about Mark Rothko

currently my favorite artist.  How I wanted to like this play! And how dissatisfied I was.  I thought Alfred Molina  delivered a steely vision of artistic purpose, but the writing  was cliched, and seemed culled then quoted from comments, opinions, and stereotypes about art and Rothko that most of us have heard before.

Just can’t help thinking about Tom Stoppard’s “Arcadia”, a much better play about art.

Rothko committed suicide in his mid 60's, probably his own self-loathing destroying him.  The contradictions of possessing such a vision and to be yet self-consuming - withdraw as pale vision and reality dawn.

HOME time.

Friday, August 17, 2012 – 

HOME AGAIN

 A busy few days, settling in again, enjoying being home, and realizing the ennui and entropy that settle in again too.  No excuses at home or distractions to combat the boredom; the need to engage real life.  Vacation life is so novel, stimulating, beautiful.  

After I got to see the grandchildren again, a deep rounded fullness came to me, a sense of purpose about remaining near to my family.  I thought of my mother and father on vacation this year frequently, and Earl and Vera - all the vacations they took us on, all the outdoor life experience they gave us.  I hope Dad was looking down when I learned to filet that trout, and when I caught all those fish myself.   

Yesterday I jogged lightly for thirty-five minutes and came home comfortable and exhilarated.  I made a commitment to start hiking around Los Angeles very seriously - there are lots of places and I just need to get up and go do it.

I have decided that exercise and health are going to be my first priority - even before my painting.  It means less time for that, but it’s got to be the most important reality in my personal life.  

TRAVEL: Bishop, South Lake Fishing

Friday, August 9, 2012, page 2 – 

To Bishop and Home

We drove up Bishop Creek Canyon today and fished South Lake, one of our favorite Sierra lakes, the first one we began fishing in.  The lake level is shocking - I’ve never seen it so low.  The dry winter has taken a terrible toll on the eastern side of the Range of Light, the side which is dryer anyway.

  It's down 35 feet; a passage between a small island and the shore has become an isthmus and the back of lake and its inlet is a pond--puddle, in which we got stuck because John insisted on driving the boat into it.  A kind stranger towed us back to the dock and we got the motor going again, and continued fishing.

The intermittent thundershowers speckled us with some rain, but it was almost tropical.  We dried off quickly and continued fishing until we were tired and needed bathroom.  We each caught fish easily, though nothing big.  But fun. 

The unstable thunderstorms weather gave us fantastic clouds, light, rays of sun breaking through around mountaintops, looking like Moses might be giving us commandments that were overlooked in the first installment.  It rained, it shined.   Marvelous.

Dinner at Whiskey Creek and then back to our modest hotel.  I wish we could go home tomorrow instead of Sunday.  I am ready to go back to my other life, the one where I take care of Max, Jack, and Alexa, my roses, and paint again.

TRAVEL: Our Last Sierras Day, page 2

Thursday, August 8, 2012  

Last Day in the Sierras

We drove to Red Lake, a small round green gem surrounded by oxide rubble, to fish for native brown, brook and rainbows. We caught many little 6-8 inch Eastern Brook Trout, a beautiful specked fish with a pink-red tummy.  

A beautiful small waterfall spills into Upper Virginia Lake from Red Lake, and at its ingress we fished again, and John caught a brown, while I caught several nice rainbows. The weather was balmy, windy.  Dinner outdoors again at The Historic Mono Inn, watching the coming evening and the white plumes of smoke mixing with the fantastic cumulus clouds in the big empty sky over Mono Lake.

The Indian Fire, East of  Mono Lake

We'd been seeing distant smoke for two days now, dining at the Mono Inn and watching sunsets.  The local paper informed us today that there's a lighting-ingnited brush fire burning on BLM land 5 miles southeast of Mono Lake.  Even LA fire department members joined to contain it.  The terrain is sagebrush, but it's a vital ground for sage grouse, so losing territory for them is a sad event.

TRAVEL: Saddlebag Lake, our last Sierra day.

Fishing Saddlebag Lake- Again

Hunter-Gatherer Instincts

John caught a large fish here, so back again we go.  I went for a brief walk along the brook near the Saddlebag Lake turnoff  and found some new wildflowers - Grass of Parnassas, Swamp Onion, and Western Eupatorium, or snakeroot.  Lots of pennyroyal, too. We caught a lot of fish - about 12.

.

When I went back to meet John for lunch and afternoon fishing, there he sat with a lovely 2-lb. rainbow he’d caught bank fishing.  So proud of himself!  A lovely fish, and this one we cooked and ate. I filleted it very well, and we had a late dinner after a hot bath and some white wine.

What a delight to eat the fish you catch!  The fish he caught was an Alpers, a large hatchery fish placed to keep all of us Sierra lovers fishing in hopes of catching one.  

I caught two small eastern brook trout today in the lake.  Novel, 

- they are very beautiful.

TRAVEL: Virginia Lakes and Mammoth

Monday, August 6, 2012 

Virginia Lakes Fishing

Today we checked out of the Double Eagle Lodge, and drove up 395 to another lovely lake loop.  The fishing was disappointing here, but I did take a brief hike up to Red Lake, a lovely little round-cut brown diamond.  A vertiginous oxide rubble cascaded into one side of the lake, and a small waterfall departed the other.  

Here I saw a Mountain Chickadee, a Vireo, and a Western Wood Phoebe, almost displaying themselves for me to view.

The sunset began and we left and dined again at The Mono Inn, watching the alpenglow linger on the swath of lake, mountains, sky and clouds.  Breathtaking.

Tuesday, August 7, 2012 

Back in Mammoth

First day we’ve had a newspaper and internet after 4 days or so.  Another mass shooting - this time in Wisconsin.  This country is an insane reality - gun control is so imperative, and yet the individual freedoms believers, so fearful of losing access to the murderous possibilities of gun possession, defend the freedom to own these dreadful assault weapons and unlimited rounds of rapid-fire ammunition. 

They are willing to sacrifice the right to safe public, social intercourse for an open society in which must be fortified with individual searches, bodyguards, security cameras, limited access, and economic class barriers which create political and social disenfranchisement. Which only leads to more lawlessness, disintegration of family structure, an entitled faux-rebel philosophy and violent retaliatory behavior.

THE EASTERN SIERRAS: Yosemite & Saddlebag Lake

Sunday, August 5, 2012 

Yosemite and Saddlebag Lake

We drove up to Tioga Pass and had a picnic in Tuolomne Meadows, then I went on a short hike to see nanutuks - mountain pinnacles that weren’t covered with glaciers because of altitude and high winds.  They preserved alpine seeds until glacial recession and that repository of lichens, flowers, and simple plants distributed to the barren soil left after glacial scouring, breaking down and building soil for later growth of bushes, trees, and wildlife.  I learned about Clark’s Nutcrackers and whitebark pines - the birds love these seeds and disperse them widely across the mountains as they swoop and rocket through the treetops with raucous cries.

A major thunderstorm last night bequeathed us a sparkling fresh day today.  Electricity went out in the lodge, and magnificent lightning strikes illuminated the night sky as rain pelted down and thunder boomed.

Later we fished Saddlebag Lake, a rather barren brown thing, but here John caught his largest rainbow ever, a near 3-pounds that fought hard and took out line. There was a kind fellow fisherman who helped us with an I-Phone photo and a net, and to whom we bequeathed the fish which we could not cook.

Dinner at the Mono Inn, watching the long slow twilight descend upon the soft wide blue lake and in the matching sky.  Billowing cumulous clouds above turned pale violet and pink in the waning light.  Lots of nice wine and a warm breeze on the veranda, like time never ending but closing so gently and beautifully, like Faure, that one doesn’t mind, except for a mild beautiful regret.

THE EASTERN SIERRAS: Parker Lake Hike

Parker Lake Hike

A lovely morning - slept late, coffee and a long stretch and core workout in the elegant luxurious spa at the Double Eagle.  Then a 4 mile roundtrip hike up to Parker Lake - a beautiful lake with high views of strange and beautiful Mono Lake. 

Thunderstorms have been taunting us for three days now, and I could hear distant thunder, see lightning strikes and violet rain descending onto the lake as I clambered down the steep slope to the parking lot.  Then tonight, after dinner, a sudden thunderstorm and violent lightning after dinner, the wonderful smell of wet hillsides and trees, and horizontal thickened lightning streaking the dark night sky with booming thunderclaps preceding.  

POEM & ARTIST: Naoya Hatekeyama, Landscape Photography

Naoya Hatakeyama, Japanese Photographer, SFMOMA

Reminds me of Edward Burtynsky  - this photographer also records the industrial landscape, men’s encroachments upon the passive earth.  

The mountain once swelled with fullness

Its rhinegold safe in the gods' possession

But the dark we/us lusted for the holdings

And now the earth is aborted, carved and hacked

Most deliberately and cleverly.

Dante's rungs of Hell hath fury 

for this destruction has transported his kingdom 

above ground, revealed to all.

His sin, to cloak innocence and atrocity
in splendid beauty.

And no available redemption

Will save the wealth of grace

 that once belonged to all

Is lost.

TRAVEL: The Eastern Sierras, The Double Eagle Lodge

Tuesday, August 2 2012 

Double Eagle Forest Labyrinth Walk

Drove back to the resort to pick up my forgotten laptop charger and took the opportunity to walk along Reversed Creek.  Good birding - juncos, mountain chickadees, juvenile nuthatches traversing tree trunks in busy vertical directions, and best of all, a new bird, an orange-crested warbler.  He was busy working the willows along the brook, and finally came out to take a sip of water.  He was a duller yellow, with more dusky yellow-green on the back, and an eye-stripe.  Very elusive, but I did get him.  

Back to the condo for lunch and a nap, dinner at Whiskey Creek, and a brief walk on the bridge at Twin Lakes.  A windy, cloudy night, thunderstorm comings-and-goings making for dramatic skies and possibilities.

We’ve already been in the Sierras for 9 days already.  Last night the moon was full and beautiful, rising clouds chasing its ascent into the gunpowder black sky.  We stayed out on Gull Lake as the sun set, the water becoming still and darkened as indigo satin. Luminosity is the most intangible quality of color - how remote and unachievable is truly is on canvas.  Better as a cinematographer or a light and space artist, like Robert Irwin or Dan Flavin.  Why do I even try to paint?  Because the canvas is beautiful in its own way, as is the process.

TRAVEL: Eastern Sierras, Gull Lake

Wednesday, August 1, 2012  

Fishing Gull Lake

Out until 7:45pm this evening watching the dark descend into the bottle-green waters of Gull.  The fish were sporadic, but John caught the largest rainbow we’ve ever bagged in the Sierras - perhaps 2 ½ lbs.  More large fish here than anywhere else, yet, I think.  Picnic in the park on cold grilled chicken sandwiches, chatting companionably.  

The weather is so lovely-hot, then warm, breezy, with cool wafts occasionally , balmy, aligned with my skin temperature so I feel at one with the air, the breeze, the wind, the world, luxury and well-being wrapping me and opening me to mountains, sky, air, darkness, moonlight, lake wavelets and wind kisses on the glassy surface of mountain lakes green, blue, black, brown, turquoise.