Salty like hot dogs (and tears). Sweet like marmalade (and life).
Audrey Hepburn
Rumi
Masanobu Fukuoka
Photo Challenge — Earth
Running boy from Time for Bed, Ned by Pam Zinnemann-Hope, illustrated by Kady MacDonald Denton
Man on a bench from The Old Man and the Afternoon Cat by Michaela Muntean, illustrated by Bari Weissman
Rabbit from ?
I often don’t know how to describe my collages, so I use the word quirky. How else could explain this odd conglomeration using a couple of dogs and a Dr. Seuss character?
A quirk is a sudden twist. I was surprised to read that in the dictionary, because I think of quirks as “unique-nesses” — those things that make you you.
We currently have a cat that loves belly rubs. I consider that a quirk.
Last week our cat disappeared.
The first day, I didn’t think much of it. She’ll be back, I told myself.
But when I went for a walk, I scanned the ditches on either side of the road, just in case she had darted out in front of a car and met her demise.
The second day, I started mentally running through the list of predators in the vicinity. I hear coyotes howl at night. Do they like cats? My brother told me that large owls prey on cats. I hadn’t seen any large owls, but he said there were some in the area. Our neighbor once told us that foxes prey on cats. I know foxes live around here. I was pretty sure that the bald eagles prefer fish from the river, so I ruled them out — hoping I was right about that.
I walked the road again looking for our little black cat, calling her, looking in the fields for her — but the only black I saw were crows.
The third day came and I was worried. I asked my brother, didn’t we used to have cats that would disappear for a week at a time?
“Ishibon would go off two to three weeks,” he said.
Ishibon had been our first cat. I remembered Ishibon going off and coming back. I felt better.
A little.
But by the fourth day, I felt like I needed to brace Mary for the inevitable.
“If Piper doesn’t come back,” I told her, “we’ll need to get another cat to keep the mice at bay.”
“I don’t want another cat,” she said. “I want Piper.”
Piper, with all her little quirks, was our cat.
It was Good Friday, and I found myself thinking about Jesus’ disciples watching Jesus die on the cross. They had so hoped that He was the Messiah.
“There, there,” the Pharisees undoubtedly said. “We’ll get another Messiah.”
And one of the Marys would have replied, “I don’t want another Messiah. I want Jesus.”
Because for all His quirks — picking grain on the Sabbath and speaking with a Samaritan woman, all those times He behaved in unexpected ways, and then, at the end, to die like that — He WAS the Messiah.
The people simply couldn’t see it at the time.
If He had behaved like everybody else, He wouldn’t have been God.
I know I’m not saying it well, but the quirks made the Messiah.
Your quirks make you. My quirks make me.
And our quirky little cat returned on Saturday, an early Easter gift for us.
I think she wanted a belly rub.
I sent this one to my son, Sam, because it fit his sense of humor. The caption went something like this — “He was so busy watching the man with the parachute that he didn’t notice the birds perched above his lemonade.”
It makes me chuckle.
House from Mother Night by Denys Cazet
Child from The Silly Sheepdog by Heather Amery and Stephen Cartwright
Dog — I can picture the book, but I can’t find it or remember any of the title
Last night, before I went to bed, I found myself looking through all my cards, considering ways to shuffle my A-to-Z plans in order to avoid using this one.
I’m really not happy with it.
This was an early card and has so many problems. Would you like me to point all the mistakes?
First, there’s no background. The characters are just kind of plopped into nothingness, a pale haze of watercolor that’s barely noticeable.
Then, the man reading the newspaper is holding a leash that leads nowhere. Where’s his dog? Why didn’t I include it?
Third, the old man’s right ear — I can’t believe that I never finished cutting around it.
When I’m aware of the mistakes, they become the only thing I see. It’s awful. I need to take a step back.
The story I had in mind for this was one of obliviousness — both the man reading the newspaper and the grumpy man clutching his newspaper are oblivious of the rabbit that’s right in front of them.
And, golly, isn’t that true?
I see the mistakes in the picture — but the “rabbit” that’s in front of me, the one I’m not seeing immediately, is that on this journey of collage, I’ve actually travelled quite a way. It was a bit of a jolt to realize that.
Compare “Newspaper” with this, the most recent collage I made —
The card is laid flat to show that I finally got smart enough to write the books I use right on the back of the card.
Interestingly, the story in this collage was also supposed to be about obliviousness. The boy is so taken with the tiny chicken perched on the piano that he doesn’t notice the baby polar bear sleeping beneath it.
The picture still has problems — but the problems are different. Overall, it seems more complete than “Newspaper.”
Sometimes it’s good to look back and see how far you’ve come.
It’s like a rabbit in the path. Good to notice.
Sort of.
Man reading the newspaper from Wheels on the Bus (a Raffi Song to Read book) illustrated by Sylvie Kantorovitz Wickstrom
Grumpy man from The Old Man and the Afternoon Cat by Michaela Muntean, illustrated by Bari Weissman
Rabbit from ??
I was insistent that we have our Easter egg hunt in the orchard… because of this picture
Not quite 50 years ago, in that same exact spot, we hunted for Easter eggs — my brothers and sister and I. I don’t think we called it the orchard in those days because it was almost inconceivable that those saplings would actually grow into trees that would bear fruit.
My mother stood in the middle and watched us race around looking for eggs — real eggs, hardboiled and dyed, not plastic and filled with candy.
This year, we filled plastic eggs for Henry. Mary and Laurel hid them in the orchard and on the way to the orchard.
Some were placed high in the trees. Henry isn’t up to climbing yet, so his uncle “Fred” helped him reach them.
I know Easter isn’t about the eggs and the egg hunts, but there’s something deeply satisfying about so many generations doing the same activity on the same piece of land.
To laugh is human — but to moo bovine.
I had such big plans at Christmas. I was going to make teeny collages for all my friends.
Anna loves cows so I made her a cow collage (a cow-lage?). It ended up being one of only two that I mailed out.
She sent me a picture of it on her refrigerator.
I love that it’s right beneath the note telling her that she is an amazing student teacher. I bet she is.
A while ago, while trying to work on using metaphor, I wrote a poem about cows, using Billy Collins’ poem, Litany, as a model.
Bovine
You are the map and the Atlas,
the Big Mac and the shake.
You are a javelin held aloft by a strong arm,
and a smooth wet stone in the hand of a little boy.
You are the fresh-mown grass after summer rain,
and the thunder that preceded the shower.
However, you are not the purr of a kitten,
the wag of a dog’s tail,
or kraa-coo-coo-coo of a mourning dove.
And you are certainly not the whisper of butterfly wings.
There is just no way that you are butterfly wings.
It is possible that you are the flock of sheep,
maybe even the laying hen,
but you are not even close
to being the eagle hang-gliding overhead.
And a quick look in the mirror will show
that you are neither the towering pine
nor the creeping myrtle.
It might interest you to know,
speaking of the plentiful imagery of the world,
that I am the garbled voice in the drive-through speaker.
I also happen to be the blistered toe in a new shoe,
the frayed pink leash on the dog,
and the unmailed letter waiting for a stamp.
I am also the fuzzy blanket tucked around a child
and the hand-thrown mug filled with coffee.
But don’t worry, I’m not the map and the Atlas.
You are still the map and the Atlas.
You will always be the map and the Atlas,
not to mention the Big Mac and–somehow–the shake.
I felt the need to apologize.
Dear Billy Collins,
I’m sorry that I ripped off your poem. It’s just that I don’t put enough metaphor into my poems and this little exercise is such good practice.
I was thinking about the cows down the road. Cows that aren’t cows because I know cows are female and I’m pretty sure these are male, although I haven’t ventured in to confirm my suspicions.
The chief “cow”, a cranky fellow, comes to the fence and shakes his horns at me when I pass. He wants me to know that he’s tough and armed and that I shouldn’t mess with him.
Years ago, when cows complete with udders grazed in that field, they would nibble grass out of my hand and I loved to feel their smooth wet noses.
So I was thinking about cows (that aren’t cows), and the things they are and aren’t, and wrote this.
I hope you don’t mind.
Come sit with me on this rocky ledge
And gaze into the bay
Water greengrayblueandwhite
Splash-splash-crash and spray
I had read to watch for seals that frolic in Horseshoe Bay at Whytecliffe Park near Vancouver, British Columbia. Still, it was a pleasant surprise.
Even without the frolicking seal, I could have sat by the water all day.
Part of my morning quiet time includes a creed — to remind myself of those things I believe to be true. It started with the basic Apostles’ Creed, but has grown. One part that I added is this:
I believe that the trials in my life are ultimately God’s good for me. They are like the grains of sand in an oyster that God uses to produce pearls.
The world is an unkind place. It’s full of people who thumb their noses and stick out their tongues.
Yesterday, in the checkout at the grocery store, the young woman behind me, obviously upset by something that had happened, said to her companion, “I just want to punch her in the face.”
With violent words, we betray the frustrations in our hearts.
This past Sunday, I was especially frustrated by a situation I knew that my father would encounter, where he would be excluded and pushed aside. The mama-bear in me raised her hackles and lashed out with words — words I didn’t entirely regret but wish I had said with a little more kindness.
When I put together this collage, I wasn’t entirely sure what it was saying, but when looking for a “K” collage, I paused on it. Yes, I think I know now. It’s about right responses. It’s about kindness. So timely for me today.
The one boy is obviously the bully. He’s not nice. He’s not being nice.
The man is ready to rush in and give him a good smack.
But the other boy, he’s still extending the ping-pong paddle.
In kindness.
“Come and play,” he seems to be saying.
It’s Jesus. He constantly says, “There, there. I see. I know. Come unto me, you weary, heavy-laden, frustrated, overwhelmed child. I still love you. I still want to play ping-pong with you.”
And as I yield to Him, He adds another layer to the grit in my life, working to create a pearl.
Background from The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything by Linda Williams, illustrated by Megan Lloyd
Man from My Dad’s Job by Peter Glassman, illustrated by Timothy Bush
Ping-pong paddle boy from My Fun With Words by James Ertel, illustrated by Geoffrey Brittingham, Seymour Fleishman, Vernon McKissack
Bully from Wheels on the Bus (a Raffi Song to Read book) illustrated by Sylvie Kantorovitz Wickstrom
Hot Dogs and Marmalade 