Flood watch

Most of the time living on a creek is a major plus; but every now and again along comes a weather reminder that it's not all beer and skittles (where that expression came from, I have no clue). This is one of those winters and when I least expected a lot of flooding as the usual conditions to make it happen weren't there as in lots of snow that melted rapidly.

This is also, in my 35 years here, one of the more unusual floods I have seen in that our creek isn't just backing up water from a nearby river but it's got a lot of its own current. The photos are amazing. A little scary too as I am not sure how much higher it will get. Theoretically the crest was supposed to be this morning but now they are saying this evening where we live.

We do have a plan for such a situation if it reaches the driveway in front of the house which we have never seen, but the former owners told us happened once. My part of the plan involves getting out the cat carriers and rolling up the Oriental rug-- just kidding, I think.

A lot of the roads on the way to out here are already closed as we are a land of many small rivers and creeks. For today, cross out the small :). Unless people do something stupid, like try to drive through running water on the road, there is no danger in this kind of situation. It's just-- let's say different for how you get around and what you have to do-- like in create dikes out of plywood (the other part of our emergency plan for our creek and us.

As a reference for anyone not familiar with what our creek is supposed to look like, I took this photo January 3rd right below our house. When the water finally goes down, thanks to all this current, it won't look the same for probably years as trees will have been swept away.

Pineapple Express

When temperatures turn abruptly warm up here (for a winter) and then a storm with a lot of rain arrives from the south, we call it a Pineapple Express. So in hours, my part of the country has gone from this--

to this

and this (latest photo of the barn when it's too dark for photos would show the creek right below it-- as in two feet below it).

Our creek is obviously way over its banks which is no big surprise as are many other rivers in the Willamette Valley with more heavy rains due.

The question is where is this storm heading and how high will our creek be before it's over?

 The garden is likewise drowned as water runs off the fields.

Definitely makes for interesting weather. The only thing good I can say about it is-- I have had a miserable cold where I don't feel like doing a lot anyway. Well, the creek had been pretty low; fortunately leaving it a lot of space to absorb more water-- for awhile.

Nature is an energy builder

Without a doubt, nature is one of my stars, moments with it bring energy to me. During the month of January when we had problems with our plumbing and bad colds that were hard to knock, as in they'd go away and we'd either get a new one or they would not really have gone away, being out in nature, cold though it was was the main energy builder.

One morning, the alpenglow was all around our valley as a rosy glow ringed the horizon just as the sun was rising. To see the setting moon above it, just before 8, was the cherry on top of the sundae.

Then there was a visit to our favorite wildlife refuge one Sunday as we watched the geese and ducks, with an extra treat of a coyote hunting in one of the meadows. He was at a bit of a distance for great photos but to watch him hunt, how he worked a field, that was interesting and enjoyable (unlike when it's watching them go after our sheep).

 It looked like he/she got at least one meal while hunting as we saw him jump and then appear to eat something. Maybe a frog as he was near a small pond.

We were actually there to take photos of the geese but sometimes they simply don't cooperate with where they land and take off. The sounds though of them and being there, was restorative with or without photos.

Sunriver

Stars

From a symbolic perspective, besides black holes, space has stars. They give energy to all around them. Sometimes a little too brightly as in burn up what is too close; but like with the star that is our sun, they send out energy that we can absorb to build our own energy.

Stars in our own lives are those things that bring us joy, teach us, bless our lives, and lets us help others. Some of the brightest stars will be what we do for others as that energy bounces back on us. That is why politics is not all a bad thing. Bad if it's a black hole that we let suck our energy but if we are out working for the causes in which we believe, it becomes a star that not only can shine on our lives but that of others.

When I was thinking about 2011 in my life, reliving the events, I read an encouragement to think over what you could remember of the year and then look at your journal to fill it in more of the year. Well my journal wouldn't help me much as when I counted up how many pages I wrote last year-- it was eighteen-- and they weren't even all the best moments of the year by a long shot.

The camera did a better job recording the stars in my life. It was many wonderful trips with our kids and grandkids, the whole family together at the beach or in the mountains. Those kind of things don't come all the time but last year they came more frequently than they might in the future or even had in the past. Those moments were stars without a doubt.

Then were were my manuscripts that I worked on editing for becoming eBooks and a new one I began. Writing was a renewed joy for me to be working on them, improving them, creating digital covers. The stories pulled me back into them and whether they work out to be successful sales wise (look back on black holes for that), they have been among the stars of my 2011.

To bring that to life, I did digital images from many of the special places; which I then put into a slideshow with music and a song that seems to totally say it all about how I believe about living. The songs speaks of the secret of making every moment into a star-- loving it, relishing it, but not trying to hold onto it.

Only a Moment

For my life, my daily life here at the farm, the following are black (and black and white), but they are not black holes. They give me energy and much joy. Our new cat is such a pleasure with her interesting personality and how she is adjusting into our family. With the three of them, it's off and on rather like having toddlers again. Little by little though they are all accepting each other.

Well BB has the hardest time as he is alpha cat and he evidently feels the need to establish that fact with her (lots of luck on that one) or feels she is challenging him by her being here as she moves into the mainstream of the home. He doesn't really attack her but just follows and gives her a look that has her yowling and running back to the bedroom.

Our dignified, Blackie has a more casual attitude toward the whole thing; in fact he has actually protected her the first time BB seemed to be about to attack her. Blackie jumped over him and got between them; but then Blackie is our peacemaker. If Farm Boss and I are having an argument (yes, we have them), he will come to me to try and make peace.

I don't know if there is reincarnation, but this little cat was born about the same time my little buddy, Persia, died. She is so much like her in personality and looks that sometimes it's hard not to wonder. She is usually right near me somewhere and she has filled a hole that has been there since I lost Persia 2 1/2 years ago. Her name is Pepper. For awhile it was impossible to get a photo of her as she'd see the camera and run. She is much more relaxed... well kind of... about the flash.

Black Holes

 Warning: After writing this blog and rewriting it and realizing my mind is not only in hyper-drive these days but has a bit of a chaos issue going on with too many issues roiling around, it may not flow well or make a lot of sense to you. I know the subject makes sense-- black holes.  Explaining them, well that's a whole other story; but if the blog is ever going to go out, it has to go-- as is.

The other day Parapluie and I were talking as I mentioned waking up at 3 AM and feeling depressed about the black holes in my life. She asked what that meant. As we talked, I thought how I had mentioned black holes earlier in this blog, and it would be a good topic to explore more deeply here.

In space, a black hole is a bit of a space mystery. They are part of the energy continuum, at least as best I understand them. They are a region which can suck energy into them, and it cannot escape. Scientists, with better telescopes and able to look from further out, are learning more about them; but in general they appear to take energy for what seem to be unknown purposes. They are sinkholes, quicksand, suctions that draw into them energy but never (apparently) release it. Black holes continue to grow by absorbing energy through taking what is around them. When something goes into a black hole, science can no longer see or measure it. The term is obviously complex and my simple explanation doesn't do it justice but for my purposes, it explains how I use the term for my own life.  Wikipedia on Black Holes.

Okay so that's the science end of it. My end of how I see my own black holes. They are energy gobblers, and there are several types. My dividing them that way leads to what I try to do about them. Black holes to me represent those things that are not all I want them to be and that fact is bothering me.

When a black hole is just about worrying; but I can't do a thing about it, I try to eliminate them from my mind. This can especially be politics when it's in regions I have no influence at all. Other black holes seem more positive as they show me there is a problem and I can fix it if I just want to enough. Waking up at 3 AM and fretting over something is good motivation to do exactly that.

So maybe in our lives, black holes can have a purpose if we recognize them as sucking our energy and then break them into piles. One pile for those where we have no control. These are good ones to list on a piece of paper that is then burned. Whenever they come into our minds, we push them away. If we have no part of being a solution, weren't part of the problem, then they are sucking energy away from us for no purpose.

Politics can be that way. When politics start reaching a level where I am not just learning what is going on but actually worrying about it, I know I need a break. Politics is one of those areas that can though be a negative but also a positive where it comes to energy. When we can write about it, talk about it to possibly influence others, donate and volunteer, it's a positive. When it's just worrying, it's a black hole that needs to go.

There are other things in a person's life that are the kind of black hole you want to eliminate from any time. One example is relationships you cannot fix. If say you have a parent who did wrong by you, but you cannot fix it; you didn't cause it; it's past being repaired, then what is the point of letting it suck energy? These make for great books but not necessarily good in our lives as they can ruin what we can fix.

So a positive use of a black hole, for those things I cannot change, is two-fold. One is stop letting it have any airtime if I really cannot do anything regarding it. But supposing what I need to do is not external but internal as in forgiving that person, even though they are no longer in my life? Than the constant awareness of this energy sucker is actually a warning to do something about it because it is bothering us and could pop up as a physical problem next. Often when a black hole has been bugging me like this, there is something I need to do. When I do it, it disappears.

In the let-it-be category, right now for me, would fit whether my books ever sell on eBook sites. That's obviously not easy to do.  I have things I can do like get places where people, who might like stories that aren't a standard genre, actually would find them. But in the end, I can't impact what others choose to buy. Worrying about it would be a pointless black hole but working to get the books to be all I can make them as well as to find the places I can do promotions, that's a positive use of a black hole.

I think my attitude toward this, which is do the best job I can while releasing the results, that comes from years of doing creative work like painting and sculpting and having to face the same issue-- control the work and let how others see it be their thing not mine.

The best use of black holes is when I let them alert me to things where I can change it but am not. When I lie awake at night thinking-- I am not eating right. I am not exercising enough, it sucks my energy and why? Because I won't do what I could do. Waking at 3 AM and finding it hard to go back to sleep because of fretting over something I can change alerts me. I then recognize not only do I have something I am not being healthy about but I could change it. My awareness they are bugging me in the middle of the night increases my motivation to deal with them more effectively when daylight comes.

Black holes can be the same kind of warning signals that pain is. They are an alert that energy is draining away and we can either stop letting it or fix the problem.

Next is a blog on an example of positive energy from the skies-- and closer to home.

Mao's Last Dancer

When I have seen a particularly good film, I ask later what made it so exceptional? I mean I watch quite a lot of movies, many of which I enjoy; but only once in awhile does one move me so deeply that I am in tears. Mao's Last Dancer, based on the autobiography of world ballet star Li Cunxin, is one of those.

What makes a film so moving? This one is very beautiful which alone can touch emotions. It is well done as it tells the story of Li Cunxin from his childhood in China where he was chosen from a poor village to be trained in ballet, his teen years as he began to perfect his skills and develop his emotional strength, and finally as an adult when he comes to America to perform for three months with the Houston Ballet Company. Three different actors portray the dancer through those stages of growth-- the beginning, the development and finally the reward.

To go back and forth in time, as Li remembers his experiences while he is in Houston, is certainly the sign of a gifted director when it works. Australian director, Bruce Beresford, fits the criteria and he brought it altogether beautifully for viewers. To understand from where Cunxin has come is to understand what comes next when he announces at the end of his three month time in Houston that he does not want to immediately return to China.

This was in 1981 and our relationship with China was still back and forth. Although Mao had died in 1976, China was working out who it was, who it wanted to be in the world. Tienanmen Square was eight years in the future. This defection was something the Chinese leadership had feared in allowing him to go to America, and they would do what they could to stop it happening. His defection would be bad publicity for them in the world and among their own people. Li wanted freedom but really not to lose his connection with his own people.

However, the reason this film is so moving goes beyond a wonderful story to the deeper elements that lie within it. Tears come from realizing the price someone pays for greatness, for understanding the value of freedom, and how important family and culture are to our life. Besides being so moving, it is the kind of film that leaves a person thinking long after it has ended.

In the last few years the term American exceptionalism has been much touted. Anybody who doesn't say that Americans are the best must not be a true lover of country. Well what this film brings out, I think, is that it's human exceptionalism  that so awes us, and it can be found many places and among many peoples.

Most of us live lives that really leave us with no clue of how difficult it can be to rise to our highest potential. We either don't even try or our highest potential is not that much of a challenge for us-- perhaps we never even discover what it is. What Li Cunxin reminds us is what it takes to rise to the top in a world where there are not many, the price that is paid, but also the sacrifices of those who love us and whom we love.

The illustration that inspired him of a man learning to draw back a bow, the strength required to do that, and how it applied to dancing, that his muscles would let him fly, that is true of so much in life on many levels.

The film (and probably his book which I now want to read) also emphasizes how important freedom really is. It illustrates what we can sometimes be asked to sacrifice to attain it and why we should not easily give it up-- especially not in the name of security. It is secure in a cage. Want to live in one? Yes, in a culture, we do need rules. We need some protections, but we should be wary of those who ask us to give up our individual freedoms without a very powerful reason because often what they really want is to grow their power.

I highly recommend this film. It's on Netflix. After we saw it, I bought it from Amazon as I know I will want to see it many times if for no other reason than the marvelous dancing. There is nothing more awesome than watching gifted ballet stars at their height. Awesome doesn't begin to describe it. Li Cunxin was that kind of dancer and so was the actor who portrayed him, Chi Cao.

Mao's Last Dancer

Three new pots from Westwood Gallery

 For quite a few years I tended to buy pottery every so often. Not that it was an addiction, but it might have come close as I just love pots. I love Hopi, Zuni, Acoma, Navajo pots, some of mine still reside in Arizona, as well as the ones various artists create sometimes with unbelievable glazes.

I have bought them to use as serving pieces for a meal, to hold flowers, or just to sit in the house and look beautiful. But I had enough or so I told myself and I broke the purchasing habit a few years ago. Then last year we saw Walter Ruston's work at his gallery, Westwood, and I really did hanker for buying myself one... or two or... Well I resisted-- at the time.

Because on that visit I hadn't a camera with me, I told the potter that I'd like to do a blog on his lovely gallery but would have to come back. Life tends to get in the way where it comes to such plans.

Finally, on the second day of the new year, we decided to wander around the hills, checking out the backwoods (further back than us even). I love owner built homes sometimes hidden in narrow canyons, along creeks or under big fir and cedar trees. Days like this one, when it's raining and the mist hangs heavy in the air, it pretty much is as good as it gets for me. I think that comes from being a native born Northwesterner.

Farm Boss and I talked about how we had always wanted to build a home like the one above with lots of natural wood and various wings sprouting out different directions. I have books full of the stories and photos of people who have built ones like that. We are iffy about whether that would be a little too much work at our ages; but the yearning for it hasn't lessened even as much as we do like our home and land.

One of the things on my mind this drive was to revisit Westwood Gallery, and I came both with a camera in hand and in the mood to buy. I am very happy with the three pieces I added to our farmhouse. The stoneware bowl is microwave and dishwasher safe which makes its practical for serving meals.

The other two are fired in a pit, not the kind of process that enables them to be flower vases but they sure do look pretty. The first one he calls horsehair for the process which means horsehair is laid into the glaze to cause the dark patterns by reducing the glaze from a clear oxide to a dark pattern.

On our mantle, they join a Navajo wedding vase and a sculpture we bought some years back when in Nogales, Sonora.

I do admire those owner built type homes, would enjoy having more space in this one for a studio; but I also love the feel of my house which is much enhanced by the many works of art we have collected over the years. I am happy for the new additions for 2012. I had mentioned we have two Navajo rugs. The first one we ever bought, when our children were small, is at the top of this blog.

Westwood Gallery

Most galleries are in tourist locations or the center of downtowns; but some are sprinkled into the forests and wild places for their artist owners to have the inspiration of nature around them as they work and then share that energy with the people who drive up a gravel road to find them. Westwood Gallery is one of the latter.

Potter, Walter Ruston built his own gallery as an adjunct to his home and studio. The gallery is a delight with high ceilings, good lighting, lots of shelves to display his creative stoneware, raku and pit fired pots. I was really taken with the horsehair pots and remembered them from the year before when I thought I'd come back sooner but didn't make it until the second day of a new year.

Perhaps it's because I was born in Oregon, but a day like we had when we revisited Westwood Gallery was absolutely perfect, deep, misty forests, rain falling, owner built homes set back in the hills, and lovely surprises which we received the first time we saw the sign for [Westwood Gallery].  If you live in Oregon or are traveling through, and someday go roaming around the Coast Range, definitely look this one up (driving instructions on the link).

The following photos are from Westwood Gallery.

 Below are photos of the exterior of the gallery and water features. This setting is beautiful by itself but the owner has obviously gone out of his way to build a creative environment to showcase his life's work.

 The three pots I purchased will have to wait for the next blog to share.

Happy New Year

The week between Christmas and New Year's is always a favorite time of mine to stop and think about where my life is heading as well as where it's been. For me, that week is normally a quiet time although this year (and for that matter last) not so much. This year, not only did we have a nice trip with friends, but our plumbing has picked the end of December to act up. That took days of figuring out what went wrong as well as a lot of muscle and trips to town for this or that. Call a plumber? No way... I'll let you guess who said which of those statements.

Back to more positive thinking. This has always seemed a good time to think what I want to experience in the year ahead. I also ask myself if I made progress on my previous goals. It's a time to focus on what needs changing and whether previous goals are still active.

For years I used to write goal statements, with steps that might prove helpful, but it's not a rigid thing and in the last couple years, I have not written down anything although I always think about it. One thing I love about life is that no matter what I planned, there are always things that pop up that were unexpected. One thing I hate about life is there are...

2012 will be an interesting year if for no other reason than the people in my country will be choosing the direction they want the nation to go. Do they dislike helping others? They can change that and help... well only the rich anyway. Do they want to dictate other people's moral choices? They can do that based on their own religious views. Do they want wars around the world? Well they may not be able to stop that given both parties lately end up warlike no matter what they say, but one party will give them more wars as they believe in more of the empire concept which they prefer to not call colonizing but instead 'utilizing'. It sounds nicer.

Well there might be one who would get us out of wars overseas. Vote for Ron Paul (who also as a libertarian would dictate his own religious values into laws) and he says he'll end any overseas involvement. A step too far some would believe. He won't be the Republican nominee but might he run a third party race? He says not but who knows. I would naturally be happy if he did as I made my choice for who I'll be supporting for president right after I saw who the other side could possibly run given the make-up of their party at this point.

Anyway I could go on with what the country will be deciding about its direction where no matter who wins, the other side will feel no way, not possible, must have cheated to get that result and start talking revolution. At least that's been how it's been most recently; and maybe it's just human nature, and the first tribe with the first members, who chose a leader, perhaps grumbled later how it was fixed in whatever limited language they had.

For some 2012 will mean the possible end of the earth as we know it (some will think that in the US after the November election also) because the Mayan calendar ends in 2012, and everybody knows how prescient the Mayans were about future events. They did so well with maintaining their own culture against conquest.

For me, I don't concern myself so much with any of that as to think what I want 2012 to hold on a personal level. 2011 was pretty good to me. There were lots of quality family gatherings. I spent time in some wonderful places, saw some beautiful things. Creativity was active and going well in my life with my bigger issue being which things to pursue not whether there is anything. My kids and grandkids are growing and doing well. I feel like even with some personal black holes, overall I focused in on what I wanted in 2011.

That does not mean, where it comes to those areas where I have control, that all is as I want it to be. I hope I never get to where I think I have it all together. I can feel satisfied and still have dreams and goals for something new. I think I am the kind of person who will always have hopes for what I might change or make better in the future. I like knowing change is possible even if I don't change a thing.

Actually it has surprised me how life is at 68. I expected it to be more limited, with me more set in my ways. Although I do believe I could change things now, if I was willing to pay the prices for doing so, I expect that to not be so true with the coming years as aging necessarily does narrow down our options. In my case, however, much of what being 68 would have already narrowed, I didn't/don't want. By this age, I know myself and what means the most to me. I believe that where I am locked in, I made and am making that choice based on other considerations.

In 2010 I had gotten into doing snow digital images. I found a piece of music for a slide show illustrating the feeling I have about the nostalgia I often feel around now. I don't think I could say it better this year; so here it is again as a mix of dreams and reality, the things that still swirl around in my head.

releasing but not forgetting

HAPPY NEW YEAR, EVERYBODY!!!!!

After I had written this blog, I was skimming around in the blog world and came across some suggestions for ways to evaluate our last year and the one to come. It was from the woman who created the Tarot cards I bought this fall. Check out her ideas [Gaian Soul].

Kind of an interesting thing happened as I was reading her blog. She said when she does such an end of year evaluation, she considers the Three of Air to be the right card for the process. I read in the comments that one of the women had drawn that card before she came to read the blog that day.

So, of course, I couldn't resist giving it a try myself. Shuffle, cut, deal one card-- Three of Air. I just looked at it with surprise. I cannot explain why it would come up that way out of 78 cards, but I never have totally gotten how Tarot can work. Coincidence some would say. Okay but what are the odds? If you want to know what the Three of Air means, and how appropriate it is for looking at one's year or toward a future set of goals, check out her link.

Oregon Coast in storm

Right after Christmas, Farm Boss and I drove to the Oregon Coast to spend a couple of nights sharing a rental house with our long-time friends, Parapluie and her husband Fisherman. I think I have mentioned before that Fisherman and Farm Boss were friends before either she or I came along.

Through the years, we have done a lot of things together and nothing is better than a relaxing couple of days to talk, laugh, cook, eat, enjoy the beach, read, and watch a movie or so. This trip we got lucky with a perfect storm, lots of wind and some heavy rain but not so much of either as to knock out power or make the drive back home difficult-- well anymore than ever where it comes to Oregon. Photos are from the Seal Rock area to north as far as Neskowin.

The rocks below look pretty vacant, other than one resting gull, but enlarge the photo. With binoculars and knowing for what they were looking, everybody but me could see the Black Oystercatchers. On blind faith that a photo would let me see them, I shot the rock formation about where I was told they were supposed to be. When I had the photo, Parapluie pointed out their long legs and red bills. Finally I could begin to pick them out also. Talk about camouflage.

Incidentally Parapluie started a painting of oystercatchers while down there. Before she left, It looked like she had an interesting start on what is obviously a challenging subject

Snow falling on the past

Putting snow onto my own digital images has become kind of addictive. I made quite a few snow digital paintings last year because in my part of the Pacific Northwest, winter more often looks like the next two photos-- and I am not complaining about that because not only is snow inconvenient, but around here, when it comes, it often melts fast and that means flooding.

For creating more snowing images, I'd like a software program that lets me do it on my computer, not requiring going online, and lets me enlarge it to a full screen. It seems to me it'd be a very meditative thing to do. Although I have seen snow globe sites, they aren't generally with the kind of images I prefer. I'm going to look for that possibility next time I get into Staples. Where it comes to online, Blingee is the best for a free program that easily lets me create the volume of snow I want.

Doing something like this right now is especially good for me as a way to not think. When I do think, my mind is in hyper-drive. I had been working on a new story which will be another historical romance which was requiring research to get the setting and times right. I got into it because I thought I had finished editing my contemporary manuscripts right up until I went back and looked briefly at Desert Inferno, which was already on Kindle, only to find a lot of minor glitches. How the heck did that happen? I had put a lot of time into editing them all and yet it still wasn't as right as I could make it.

So I set aside the new project and went back to re-edit it (which fortunately Kindle allows you to resubmit and they offer the corrected version to those who already bought the story-- I know about that as one of the ones I had bought had that happen). Then rather than let the next one, From Here to There, just go out (which I had also thought was in fine shape), I edited it again too. Now I am onto what will be the third one, Golden Chains, which is the one that actually follows Desert Inferno with one of the characters from that story.

If that all sounds confusing to you, it does to me too. Anyway I think I will have a third one ready to go by the end of the coming week. I also feel very good about From Here to There. Of course, I naturally like all of my stories-- they are my children. For anyone interested in information about them, check out the Rain Trueax link alongside this blog which will take you also to Romance with an Edge or to Amazon to purchase the books.

Whenever I get these all done to where I feel good about them, finally I can go back to the new story. Any wonder I like some time watching a snow globe?

The above snow scene is in Wupatki National Monument in Northern Arizona, a Sinagua site of dwellings north of Flagstaff. I've only been there in good weather which meant this digital required imagining. I think it'd be great to be there when it was snowing-- assuming the roads weren't closed.

Tis the Season

Christmas Eve this year comes with a New Moon. Anybody who pays attention to moon cycles knows that a new moon is for planting-- in this case, how about planting dreams for the new year?

Maybe because I get very little of the white stuff, I love the snowy images I can create online. My favorites are snow with cabins. This particular cabin is one of my dream cabins, mostly a dream that by now I've given up on other than still in my thoughts once in awhile.

Christmas is a time for that-- reminiscing on what was and what we might wish had been. It is both a time of sadness and joy, a time to be grateful for what is but nothing wrong with imagining what might yet be when Christmas rolls around in 2012.