BB on the couch variant

BB on the Couch variant, by Mary Stebbins Taitt. My third attempt to do a from-scratch painting on my new Cintiq tablet. I haven't quite got the hang of it yet. (The original is on Imagik).

Puttenesca a la Marie

This is what I made for dinner last night--a form of Puttenesca a la me. It was part of my creative every day, LOL!

The main thing is fresh tomatoes (or you can use canned if haven't any fresh), garlic, olives, capers. Leave anything out you don't like. I served mine over "designer" pasta ("Mother-in-law's tongue"). I added mushrooms, veggies, wine, and pork. (Also salt, pepper, basil, parsley.) You could add an alternate protein source, or none. But although it was utterly wonderful and seems fancy (cause it's soemthing I've never made before quite like this), it didn't take long.

I dipped the fresh tomatoes in the same water I was boiling for pasta, each for 45 seconds, slid off the skins and chopped them up--the tomatoes, not the skins. Saute the garlic (onions if you like them--I can't eat onions) in olive oil, add any extras (meat, veggies, mushrooms). When they are nearly cooked, if you add them, add the tomatoes, wine, capers, olives, cook a couple minutes and serve over the pasta you've been preparing, YUM YUM! (I fried up a couple pieces of polenta to serve on the side.)

Les Fleurs Incomplet

Les Fleurs Incomplet, by Mary Stebbins Taitt, for CED. IThis is the
second from-scratch painting I did on my new Cintiq. The learning
curve for me is steep. This is a crop from the original.

Titty brought the parrot on deck after a time to enjoy the sunshine and have a real look at the sea.

Rules:
* Pick up the nearest book. Right now.
* Go to page 56.
* Find the 5th sentence.
* Write that sentence in your Title.
* Copy these instructions as a comment on your Title.
* Don't get your favourite book or the best one, but the closest to you right now.

January 3, 1982

January 3, 1982, 3:45 PM

This book frightens me. It is too perfect. Already, I have made an error. My writings are too hesitant, too awkward, too groping to be put into such a beautiful book.

I am sitting in a secluded spot overlooking Osprey Bay and Osprey Point from the shore of Second Home Lake. The lake is frozen and snowclad. There is about four inches of snow beneath my feet. I am sitting on a log, on my old red ski parka. I hear chickadees and nuthatches. The have come to feast at our feeders, nearby.

I have three dogs with me, Shiloh, Buffy and Charlie. I had wanted to come alone, but they need to go out, too. Shiloh has proceeded to defecate, urinate and roll. He is distracting my attention by jumping in my lap. He also tried to run away. Sassy is in heat . . . he wants to visit her. Charlie is already gone. Buffy is hanging around.

Shiloh hears a very loud chickadee and tries to locate it in the hemlock. I see two there now . . . one dives down through the branches with amazing agility. Shiloh I crunching snow, chewing it audibly, loudly, to get the water from it, I assume.

I hear a sort of high-pitched warbling tweet—a single drawn-out yet short note, followed by a lot of soft twitterings. It may be the chickadee, but I don't recognize it.




I seem to be in a very wild place. From where I sit, I see no signs of man. If I strain myself, I can see our house through the trees, or far off, see Henderson's house through the trees across the lake. Neither of these is easy to see and I could be in a vast uncharted wilderness, but for the car sounds.

It is a dull late afternoon. The sky is monochromatic pale grey, almost white. The trees are also grey—dull, darker grey, the snow grey-white. Only the hemlocks and pines are green, a dull grey-green. There is no wind, no movement save the dogs. I can no longer see or hear any birds. The place seems desolate. It is cold, but not bitter. The air is fresh, damp, and slightly woody. Several large oaks rise behind me, their bases covered up to about 5 feet with patches of dull dark green moss. The large sugar maple beside me has no moss, just a small creeping poison ivy vine starting up at its base.

There are a number of dead Norway Spruces of varying sizes around me, and behind me, to the West, the plantation of spruces and pines marches up the slope.

Shiloh has tried twice more to sneak off. He tried to dig up a small log. Buffy is yapping. Charlie, who has returned, is dancing around. They want me to play with them. Almost directly before me, near the shore of the lake, is a bittersweet nightshade with red berries. In this light, they are dull, almost black.

I'd better go back home and work on supper.



1-15-82 Yesterday, I snowshoed down the canoe trail to the lake, carefully avoiding a fresh fox trail in the snow. I followed beside the fox prints, watching where the fox climbed up beside several trees and up only a beaver Lodge. I was careful not to harm the trail.

Today, I returned on skis. A light snow had fallen. All that remained of the fox trail were tiny, almost invisible indentations in the snow. If I didn't see it yesterday, I would not know what it was today. No one else had come this way to see the trail.

- - -

These journal entries were written in a gorgeous hardbound journal decorated with lovely paintings of birds. I prefer to do my journaling in a beat-up spiral notebook where I can cross off and start over without defacing the book. Other than one poem, there was nothing else in the book except all the bird paintings. The book had been in the basement flood and is ruined and I am going to throw it away now. I believe I have already typed up the poem (may years ago). I feel sad throwing away what was once a beautiful journal. Over the years, people have given me many beautiful journals and most of them, like this one, have an entry or two—or none at all. I feel as if I should scan some of the bird paintings so they don't go to waste, but they are prints anyway, and more such journals were manufactured, and people who like that sort of thing must have enjoyed them. I am sure I enjoyed looking at them when they were given to me.

All photos are of art from the journal these entries were written in. I could not find the name of the artist, and I have now thrown away the journal.

Posing Nude in the Snow ( a poem)

oops, I revised it: Here's the new version, older one underneath:

Posing Nude in the Snow

I hold a plate of eyeballs the size of fish eyes.
Round. They stare in every direction, with irises
olive drab. I tip the plate toward my mouth
and pour them in. They smush on my tongue
like capers, salty, sour and sharp. Some escape
to look inside my mouth and belly. Perhaps
they will see my heart: a burned out cinder. A hunk
of graphite. Stone masons attack at it with hammers
and chisels, trying to recarve stone into a facsimile
of love, but the eyeballs all know better.

Mary Stebbins Taitt
For Jim Doran, Bagelboy and Mike Kline
And for Lottie, Rhonda, Dawn and Janine
090105-1950-1c
(Now you know why I don’t have any friends, LOL!)

Posing Nude in the Snow

I hold a plate of eyeballs about the size of fish eyes.

Round. They stare in every direction, with irises

olive drab. I tip the plate toward my mouth

and pour them in. They smush on my tongue

precisely like capers, salty, sour and sharp.

Some escape to look inside my mouth and belly. Perhaps

they will see my heart: a burned out cinder. A hunk

of graphite. The stone masons carve at it with hammers

and chisels, trying to remake stone into a facsimile

of love but the eyeballs all know better.

Mary Stebbins Taitt

For Jim Doran and Mike Kline

And for Lottie, Rhonda, Dawn and Janine

090105

(Now you know why I don't have any friends, LOL!)

--
I am certain of nothing but the Heart's affections and the truth of the Imagination- John Keats
Mary

Peter Duck

Peter Duck: A Treasure Hunt in the Caribbees by Arthur Ransome

My review

This is a currently reading book for me. I'm on page 142. I love Arthur Ransome, and so far, this book lives up to my expectations--it's a great read for those who, like me, love children's lit. Looking for a good book for a child--start with Swallows and Amazons.


View all my reviews.

*Moon in a Mason Jar* and *What My Father Believed*: POEMS by Robert Wrigley

My review

rating: 4 of 5 stars
The first poem in this book blew me away. I read it about 5 times. I loved the second poem. And many of the others. I have now finished the book and mostly I loved it. I wish the scale was ZERO to Ten to give more latitude. I would give it a nine or a 4.5. Most of the poems were very good some were great, and some were a bit duddy. Overall--it is highly worth reading and I loved it. The poems are evocative with wonderful images and turns of phrase. Many of the poems are delightfully understated and delicious.


View all my reviews.

More Creative Every Day

I love it when I learn to do something new. And today I am really
happy because I discovered all by myself how to make multiple colored
brush strokes in photoshop. So far, I have been making flowers. Then
fooling around in photoshop to make them into a digital painting that
pleases me. This is my most recent one. I have made a number of
them. I deleted some of them, not becasue they were necessarily bad
or anything, but because I was just playing, learning a new technique.
Fun. I think I may, if I have time, explain how at Half-formed. I
am not sure if this technique will be useful for anything else, but it
is fun to play with.

16 Beans

Rules: Once you've been tagged you are suppose to write a note with 16 random things,facts,habits or goals about you. At the end choose 16 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you it's because I want to know more about you. Unfortunately as I can only tag so many people, if you see this and decide you want to go for it, go for it.  I was tagged by Rhonda Walsh

Rhonda Welsh's Notes

1. I have a REAL friend named She-she or Sheesh, she's on-line on Facebook and I dunno if she knows Sha-sha, but I doubt it.
2. I have the same birthday as Bob Dylan and Walt Whitman.
3. I have over 5,000 unpublished poems.
4. I have multiple novels in progress.
5. I had raspberry beer for dinner.  Belgium Frambroise Lambic. 
   
6. Tonight I walked out on the pier and looked at the ice which was laid sideways by the waves and was so pretty.
7. I got a Cintiq Tablet for Christmas but don't know how to use it yet.
8. I am a Gemini and though I don't believe in astrology per se, I have the many interests (but not the skills) of a Renaissance Mind.
9. My husband and I were willing to pose nude in the snow for another blogger, but she decided it was too cold.
10. Tonight, I went to Staples and bought new notebooks for 2009 for my journal, my poems for 2009, my dreams, and my health issues.
11. I belong to a sketchbook exchange group.  No, wait, two of them.
12. I like Mozart and I like Opera.
13. I also like Bluegrass.
14. I have no close friends in the Detroit area that I see regularly (often) and I am sad.
15. I am a terrible housekeeper.
16. We never finished decorating our Christmas tree this year and all the boxes of ornaments are still sitting around the tree.

OK, I tag Coffeypot and Blue Rose and you.