another cup

My friend Marla is a potter. She gave me this beautiful little cup.

Here it is, in situ.

(by the way, I got up to adjust something very, very small in this drawing and promptly sat on a glass I'd perched on my chair. The glass fell on the floor and broke. This must be good luck, right?)

san anselmo

The sketch blog is in my hometown these 2 weeks. It is pretty incredible to see this beautifully familiar place through so many other people's eyes. 

Here are my contributions: 

My house, the house I grew up in:

The view down my street:

My version of a picture that appeared in the local newspaper after the big flood of 1982:

And, as an introduction, town hall, and San Anselmo Avenue: 

mt tamalpais

(from memory)

how things sometimes go

A recent part of my life was spent manning, so to speak, the front desk at the Eastman House. It is a museum. It is also a research institution, a graduate school, a preservation facility, an archive, a library. One afternoon, a man came in and asked to see one of the employees. I gave a call, but the person was not in. I offered to let the visitor leave a message on this person's voicemail. "No need, we're friends, I'll just call him later," the man said.

With this our interaction should have been over. The man lingered, however. "What is that mark on your neck?" he asked, suddenly slightly belligerent.

"I play viola and violin. It's from my instruments."

"Oh, yeah?"

I looked down at my things. We are done here, I was signaling. The front desk is a small confined area -- there's really nowhere to go.

"It looks like something else."

I gave no response. There was no response to give.

My silence seemed to enrage him. "I mean, what if you want to get a job? WHO is going to HIRE you with that MARK on your NECK?"

Quietly but firmly: "Someone I want to work for."

The man practically foamed at the mouth. He got up very close to the desk, intimidatingly close, and, tripping over his words, half-screamed at me: "You're missing my point! You don't understand! No one will hire you, they'll think..."

I reached for the phone. The security guard standing nearby was doing nothing, so I figured I'd better take things into my own hands if this turned ugly, which it certainly seemed to be on the verge of doing. Luckily, he backed away. "In my country, you would be shot," he shot at me, and backed towards the door, still glaring at me.

Sometimes we enrage people simply by being.

time the dandelions

In Creative Power, Hughes Mearns tells this story:

"Once upon a time a determined visitor came swiftly into my ninth-grade class and objected because the boys and girls were absorbed in writing. [...] 'I have come from Illinois,' the visitor said, in a tone of almost benumbing authority, 'and have only a few hours in New York. I sail for Europe tomorrow morning. I came here to see creative appreciation, and I think I should be permitted to see it!'

'Do you expect me to turn it on and off -- like a faucet?' I asked, trying my best to warm this lady's professional hauteur.

She said, 'I am Professor of the Methodology of the Teaching of the Language Arts in the Blank Normal College' (I paraphrase the titles, but, my word for it, the original was even more comic), 'and therefore I know enough about the practice of teaching to request that you stop this written work and demonstrate creative activity.'

'But, my dear Professor of Methodology et cetera,' I told her quietly, 'though I should do just that and you should stay all morning you would see just nothing at all.'

'My own thought exactly!' she snapped back. 'Because exactly nothing would happen!'

[...] I lowered my voice still more, so as not to disturb the children. (They were really engaged on a creative job that had absorbed their complete attention, creative appreciation in abundance if the visitor had had any educational vision at all.) 'I have a good stop-watch in my desk,' I whispered and pointed out the window to Morningside Park. 'Do take it and go out, right away, into Morningside Park. Sit down on the grass for an hour and time the dandelions. As the seconds tick away, watch their growth and then come back and report to me. Do you know what you will say? Exactly nothing has happened.'

I found the watch in my desk and tried in dramatic whispers to press it upon her. She edged away from me. I stalked her. 'Do go out and time the dandelions!' I begged. But she would not. She did not speak. She would not even stay. She went quickly away from there."

pages from a mini-calendar

These tiny creations are getting a new, bigger life in this post:

some items

on a table. Done in turquoise ink, swished around with a brush: