"There are those days which seem a taking in of breath which, held, suspends the whole earth in its waiting. Some summers refuse to end.

So along the road those flowers spread that, when touched, give down a shower of autumn rust. By every path it looks as if a ruined circus had passed and loosed a trail of ancient iron at every turning of a wheel. The rust was laid out everywhere, strewn under trees and by riverbanks and near the tracks themselves where once a locomotive had gone but went no more. So flowered flakes and railroad track together turned to moulderings upon the rim of autumn."

Farewell Summer, Ray Bradbury

la vida es buena

en la bicicleta

i am IN LOVE

with Baker City.

But I can't talk about it too much because the Monkey will worry...

If I move there will you come too?

I'm serious.

After some deliberation, I've decided to post a segment of a short essay I wrote years ago about the Bend area. This intro sets up the essay's main theme of place and change over the course of years, and I think it's appropriate to post it here as I begin my work on *the Bend Project,* which I hope to start telling you about in more detail soon...

..............................................

­Bend, OR.1979. Population: 15,000.

I’m four years old, crouched close to the sticky hardwood floor, watching my mom fill a two-quart container with honey from a wooden box sitting on an empty milk crate. I love to watch the slow process of filling the honey jar. It flows from the spigot a little differently every time depending on how fresh the honey is or how full the bulk bin is, and you need to close the spigot at the right moment before the jar is full to make sure there's room for the drizzle that squeezes through as you push the lever closed. Sitting on the floor like this, I catch a glimpse of the treetop just beyond the curtained window near the ceiling, and bask in the glow from the sun filtered through its leaves.

At our tiny, small town health food store, my mom would replenish jars of buckwheat flour from a large wooden barrel, fill satchels of dried herbs from a supply of fragrant glass jars sitting high on shelves, load up her basket with the freshest vegetables available in town, and if the weather was hot I was almost always allowed to indulge in a yogurt push-up from the old-fashioned freezer near the front of the store.

These were the days in Bend when its little cottages sat on dirt streets, and the dusty ranchers who'd lived in the area for generations graciously co-existed with the young folks who were moving up from California to lead a simple life. These were the days in Bend when there still existed a handful of eccentric characters, like the man who wore an aluminum foil hat to deflect radio waves emitted by sinister government agencies, or the couple who (I'm not making this up) were both mimes and chimney sweeps - simultaneously. These were also the days in Bend when a handful of people living in the same small area seemed to strive for the same ideals. Bartering and trading for goods or work were not uncommon among the people my parents knew. We had fresh goat’s milk from one family, and my brother and I wore moccasins hand made by another, and there was the little mom and pop health food store, residing in a boxy building with old wooden floors. Its quintessentially western storefront sat along a dirt road ending below a hill of juniper trees and volcanic rock. Its wide front porch was flanked by ponderosa pines and sunflowers sprouted from planters near the door.

I was too short to be able to see over the wooden checkout counter, but I would always ask if there were fresh coconut macaroons which I knew were often there. A miscellaneous merchandise area filled the corner near the front door - rainbow stripped candles, incense and incense burners, small wind chimes, and my favorite to look at - the colorful, translucent mylar stickers that graced the windows of any number of hippie van windows. One day I got one for my bedroom window at home - a white unicorn in front of a brilliant blue sky complete with rainbow.

alone stranger

*from my sketchbook*

Today I am a city girl, from Elsewhere. I no longer feel ownership of this place. I'm older, more urban, an interloper. Today I'm the stranger in this place that used to be mine.

The campsite I find is perfect. Just before a little creek crossing, a turn-off, a wide circle, a clearing with a huge fire pit. Boulders have been strategically placed to prevent drivers from going into the creek bed. There is also a two-by-four nailed across the span of two ponderosa pine trees, the type of thing for stringing up game. There's a green metal smoker someone has left behind, obviously with the intent to be back to use it once again. This is public land, but it feels like someone else's space; well-used but spotlessly clean. Again the feeling of being an intruder creeps up on me.

I stay, trust the wilderness, trust the dry, dispassionate nature of the Central Oregon fisherman to let me borrow their camp spot for the night. The tiny creek is not for sitting by; its banks are overhung with trailing sagey-green willow branches, but it burbles nicely against the buzz and chirp of crickets.

I hang my red chinese lantern from a manzanita branch. Dusk plays with my eyes and there's a distant tree stump, white with stripped bark, that looks like a person emerging from the woods every time it crosses the periphery of my vision. I'm too tired to start a fire. As darkness falls completely I feel, ironically, more comfortable. By this time I doubt anyone will come along and I know this campsite is mine for the night. I turn off my lanterns and the stars begin to pop out of the trees. I can see the orange glow of the campfire of my closest neighbors - down the road and across the other side of the creek. Funny how I came here to be alone, completely alone, but the sight of that fire glow reassures me. What I really want is privacy and sanity.

One beer later, I crawl into my sleeping bag, and before I know it, I'm waking up at dawn with a day on the river ahead of me, and my old desert feet already feeling the land seep back into my soul.

the not work

I've been working a lot lately. Job work, letterpress, bindery. Work in my own studio, and work at Oregon College of Art & Craft.

This makes me hugely thankful, actually. I feel so incredibly lucky to do what I do for a living.

But sometimes the work-work takes over a little, and the art work suffers.

Part of the art making process is what a friend of mine describes as the not work. The not work is what's happening when we do the dishes, fold the laundry, space out, play guitar on the back porch, cook pork ribs. The not work is actually a necessary part, an essential part of my process.


I've been in the planning, germinating, seeding stage of a project that's been held in my mind for over a year now. I'd love to start telling you about it...but I'm not quite ready. It's still in the not work stage. But this week I've been sitting on the back porch more, thinking about the work more, sensing that subtle tickle telling me it's time.

This week I'm going to throw my sleeping bag and my drawing supplies in the back of my subaru and take off for a few days. I hope to return with a little more not work under my belt, but who knows. It's about time, anyway.

a list of july

lavender in full bloom

mosquitos

peach crisp

coffee on the back deck in the morning

baby sparrows with gaping mouths

a temporary baby crow resident

old friends, new friends

running

ignoring the weeds

working - lots of work

{soon, a little vacation}

yoga

the pleasure and inspiration of watching master printers at work

a summer cold

warm cat fur

full moon up all night

sunrises

sunsets

the monkey

gentle day

In the wake of bonfires, barbecues, beer, bratwurst and sauerkraut, motorcycle rides, exploding things, we wake up reluctantly and groggy. The still overcast air feels a little more like looming winter; that we should stoke up the woodstove and warm the couch cushions instead of jumping up and out of doors into the woods to cleanse the gunpowdery residue from our lungs.

Indeed, a few false starts are made in the pursuit of hiking trails and mountain air. A town trip is decided upon. Coffee is sipped while the Le Tour De France dances across the periphery of our vision. Should we see the R. Crumb exhibit at the museum? No, closed on Mondays. Japanese Gardens? We haven't been there in a while. But do we want to share the experience with half of Portland and a good chunk of Minneapolis, Austin, L.A., Phoenix, Athens, Georgia?

GPS helps us find the Marquam Nature Park. There's a smooth, weekend hangover kind of trail. We walk. It climbs a little, and we're above Portland and on a green expanse of park. The clouds start to break up and the reluctant sun starts to warm the grass.

Being lazy and indecisive has made us hungry. The trail winds down in the direction of town, the direction of the river, and we sit on a patio with our final beer and final greasy spoon eats before the weekend is over.

Today is beautiful and sunny, and I'm out to my studio to throw open the windows and get back to work.

for ever and ever

I've been wanting to get around to doing this: homemade strawberry jam.



Years ago, during a long, hot summer in Bend, I worked in the kitchen at a tiny family-owned health food store and deli. I slung soups and salads, dips and salsas, the occasional baked sweet thing, and the occasional grilled savory thing. Then one day the owner arrived with an armload (+ a dolly-load more) of flats of fresh, organic strawberries.

I was introduced to the world of canning jam over the course of a couple of long, sticky days. I had the company of a teenage co-worker to keep the fruit stirred over the boil, and to help wipe jar rims after slurping the bubbling pink goo into little jar openings. The workers from the front of the house only dared to peek their heads in tentatively as we edged ever closer to delirium and hilarity the stickier and hotter we became.

The end result was sweet and rewarding. A fruity, sugary success.

I haven't made strawberry jam since.

Until the other day. I awoke with a purpose: to the farmers market for a flat of no-spray local strawberries, and on to the kitchen.



Making jam is pretty straight forward. You need a couple of big pots.





A goofy makeshift apron.

A gin and tonic doesn't hurt. (tonic with real cane sugar and a generous slice of lime.)

A helper cat for company.



And you have jam.

a story

She rode her bike down to the river at sunset. The balmy air brushed her skin as she stood on the railroad tracks and kicked at the shards of broken glass that lay among the scraps of filthy paper and clumps of dry grass. The rhythmic clatter of truck tires on the bridge deck above echoed against the walls of the buildings below. Across the road, the old iron works shop's wide bay doors lit up in a shower of sparks. As the sky turned the pink of twilight she saw, lying at her feet, a green marble.

happy easter

However you chose to spend it.



Mine was spend cuddling inside near the fire, with occasional forays out into the rainy spring for more fuel.



The studio cat had the same idea.

About dusk the clouds parted long enough for a long walk to the store, which took a meandering detour toward the river and the hills beyond.

Sorry I haven't been around much. There's more to come. But goodnight for now.

bergamot orange

I didn't even know what you were. In my rush to be in and out of the grocery store as quickly as possible, I picked you up without giving you a second glance, thinking you were a Meyer lemon.

You caught my attention while at the checkout when the cashier had to look you up, causing me to notice the price appearing below my quart of soy milk. You were nearly $4.00. That'd better be one charming mutherf*cking orange, I thought a la Jules in Pulp Fiction. (I mean he'd have to be ten times more charmin' than that Arnold on Green Acres, you know what I'm sayin'?) I don't typically have money to throw around on $4.00 pieces of mystery fruit, but I let myself be caught adrift in the possibility of allowing myself a little luxury, and thought *this will be a tasty adventure.* I was suddenly excited to find out what a $4.00 lemon tastes like.



Charming indeed! I have never smelled a citrus fruit so fragrant. I can't really describe it beyond citrusy except that before even peeling or cutting into it the thing ooozed fragrant citrus smells all over my hands and kitchen. Once I cut into it there was even a hint of mint.



What I ended up doing, since I hadn't planned on baking or cooking any time soon and I didn't want to risk it going bad while I floundered around being busy with other things for the next month, is juice and zest it to make a salad dressing. A little olive oil, a little ground mustard, a bit of sugar, sea salt, black pepper and fresh parsley.

Next time I get an urge to slurge, I'm going for the mystery fruit.

Nom!