GUILT

It sneaks up on me, like paying the water bill and remembering birthdays. When it hits me, all I can do is throw myself out there at the mercy of my peers. I think I caught if from my friends, so many Catholics and former Catholics; I suffer from spontaneous, flashback, Catholic, guilt syndrome. I am not Catholic but I get to suffer as if I were. “Hail Mary full of grace. . . Angle of grace, my Guardian dear. . .” If confession is good for the soul, then I confess.

I go into Whole Foods stores with no intention of buying anything. I get a cart, one of the little ones and cruise around the outside isles, through the produce, the bulk foods and fresh sea food sections. Then I gawk at the exotic sausages and stuffed pork chops, check out the cheese offerings and the bakery. All along the way, if I’m lucky, they have put out samples for the stereotype customer who doesn’t need to know how much things cost. Whatever the bill rings up, they just swipe their debit card; it’s just a number. But then I’m not a Whole Foods stereotype, I need to know the number. But I graze there. On a good day I can make a meal of it, especially when smoked salmon dip and pungent cheese selections from Italy and Denmark are on the fare. Chips and guacamole go fast so you must time yourself, be there when they set out a fresh container, take two and come back for a 3rd sample before it runs out. 

Tuesday fare is nothing like they have on weekends but it was worth the walk. Before I could get through the produce section (looking for guacamole) the guilt thing closed in on me like thunder and rain on a parade. I went straight into my penance mode, in the bulk food section; measured out a pound of dry, calico beans and tagged them with the code #number. A couple of small bananas later my cart was sufficiently stocked, allowing me to pass as a customer. I am a ‘Grazer’ but I can’t help it. I can buy something after all and it eases my guilt. In the bakery they usually have little morsels of common varieties, bread and muffins but today they had all the broken bits from the pastry bin, yogurt dipped pretzels, cookies, fudge brownies. I got a sugar buzz going and took a second lap around the track. 

I keep telling myself that I have to quit doing this. I’m sure the guys in the security section, screening their video monitors, see me come in the door and call their associates over to watch me browse, make wagers on how many chips I’ll munch before I move on; and how long it will take me to come around again. But they keep putting samples out and they keep letting me graze. I spent almost $6 at Whole Foods today and I probably ate $10 worth. The 3rd time by the cheese plater was sinful but I recognized several others who were doing the same thing. Maybe they don’t have this guilt thing as it’s all part of the business model. I wish I could get my head around that. If I kept all the toothpicks from sampling at Whole Foods I could build a bonfire. I’ll be fine, walk out the door with some beans and bananas in my shopping bag. I get the nickel refund for bringing my own bag and my appetite is suppressed for at least a while. No smoked salmon today, or shrimp scampi but I don’t need much. I remember in the Kevin Costner movie, ‘Robin Hood’ the sheriff’s men chased a boy who had killed one of the king’s deer. Robin saved the kid, killed some soldiers and sent the rest off in retreat. Good movie but I don’t need Robin. The sheriff’s men leave me alone. They know I’ll be feeling guilty again and that’s good enough for Whole Foods.

WAITING FOR PAINT TO DRY

It’s a long story. You know, getting through winter, even a mild one requires ingenuity and persistence. When I had a real job I didn’t have time to think about it. It was up at 5:00, school at 6:00, kids at 7:30, lunch at 11:00; when I took care of personal business, kids go home at 2:30, take a 15 minute nap then lesson plans, check papers-enter grades, set up lab for the next day, telephone-talk to parents, update computerized progress reports, read ahead in text and screen outside reading assignments, organize my work station and turn out the lights between 6:00 and 7:00; never, ever take school work home. After a short ride home, grab a bite and decompress for a couple of hours. Next thing you know the alarm goes off and it’s second verse, same as the first. 

But I don’t have a real job; I have to improvise, fake it. I can’t do everything I used to do but then I wouldn’t if I could. Still, at the end of the day, I want to feel spent. Right now I’m putting together a show of my photographs. The show will hang from mid March through mid April in the gallery at All Souls Church in Kansas City, MO. I try not to take myself too seriously but I get very serious when it comes to my work. Now days I work at writing, telling story, creations in the wood shop and for certain, my photographs. 

I decided to make my picture frames, three different sizes, all 26 of them. It saves me a lot of dead presidents but more important it gives me work to do. I can only make two or three at a time so when I’m sanding the finished frame, getting ready to paint, I start thinking about what I’ll do while the paint is drying, three coats. I don’t want to saw or sand while paint is drying, Duh! So this morning I decided to journal. If it doesn’t turn ugly and I stay positive I can post it on the blog. I have ten photographs matted, framed and crated with six frames ready, two more still drying, waiting on a 3rd coat. The prints themselves are safe in big envelopes, separated by dividers and handled with white gloves. My living room has cases of mat board, foam core board and three crates for finished work that are starting to fill up. The dining room table is stacked full of conservation museum glass and I can barely get to the window to open and close the blinds. 

To be honest, I do miss the kids (students) but I like this job more. It takes probably five years, maybe a decade to learn how a particular kid turns out. When you finish winding the hanger wire and turn the frame over, you know immediately. It’s not perfect, nothing’s ever perfect but it works. It’s a great motivator, I want to go back downstairs and start sawing again, or throw my camera bag over my shoulder and go out the door. I don’t need to know where to look for good lines and edges, strong shapes and vibrant color but I know it when I see them. I think the paint is dry by now. I can get that 3rd coat on and then go find a very small brush roller for touch up work. I haven’t touched the guitar in over a month and that’s not good but we’ll go there again after the show is hung. 

COTTONWOOD

Of our senses, we know that smell is most powerful when it comes to evoking memories and emotions. Regardless of when it was or where you might have been, a particular smell can transport you back through time and space. Whatever it was that you were doing that you associate with that smell, you get to go there again. I remember melon patches, cantaloupes and water melons; I was old enough to help in the garden. When I got down to turn a melon, to check it out, see if it was ready; there was a smell that I will forever associate with melons. 

‘Hemiptra’ is the scientific name for an order of insects, true bugs. They include aphids, assassin bugs, cicadas, stink bugs, box elder bugs; there are over 50,000 different species of true bugs. Stink bugs are a family within the order that feed on plants and carry an unmistakable odor. When I was a boy the only time I encountered it was in the garden, close to melon vines. I remember seeing fingernail size bugs, crawling on stems and leaves, on the melons themselves. The smell is potent and pungent but not particularly offensive. Curious as little boys are, I let those bugs crawl on my hands and up my fingers like lady bugs, which are actually beetles, not bugs at all. Then the stink was on me and had I known, I might have come away, turning up my nose and not liking it. But I loved the melons and by association, loved the smell. Sometimes when I go to the farmer’s market, where local growers bring in their fresh produce, straight out of the patch, I catch the scent and it takes me in a heart beat, back to childhood and the melon patch. 

Deer hunting for the first time was a great adventure. It was late October, on BLM land south of Montrose, Colorado. With a borrowed .257 Roberts rifle, two of my friends took me with them on opening day of deer season in 1970. It was important that we be in place at sunrise. They dropped me off on the road and went ahead. Separated by a quarter mile each, we would work our way up the mountain side and meet at the tree line. If one of us got a deer, we would field dress it and drag it back down. The others at the top would be able to see us on the road below. A cool, early morning mist would burn off as soon as the sun came up and I began my assent. The morning would lead me through several open meadows and aspen groves. As the air cleared and daylight prevailed I was climbing, immersed in the power of simply ‘Being there.’ You climb a while then stop, look, listen for a while but truth be known, you need a rest and breathing deep is both a joy and a need. I was having a very real deja vu moment when I became aware of a woodsy smell that I hadn’t noticed before. It was more subtle than stink bugs but evoked a powerful sense of the moment. If I never saw a deer, my day would be fixed in memory forever. 

Poplars are a genus of trees with about 30 different species. In the Rocky Mountains, cottonwoods thrive at lower elevations and aspen flourish as you gain altitude. Young trees have white bark and leaves that shimmer in the light, rustle in even the slightest breeze. Those leaves have a straight, flat edge at the base that is perpendicular to the petiole. The two remaining edges are serrate, converging in a point at the tip. Cottonwoods grow larger, have bigger leaves; but the general shape makes them ‘kissing cousins’.

The next year we moved to a house on the other side of town, with big cottonwood trees up and down the street on both sides. By September the trees had already begun shedding leaves. One morning after a rain, I walked out the door and was blown away by the smell of deer hunting on the mountain side. It didn't take much to figure out the source. When aspen or cottonwood leaves drop in the fall, they still contain wax and oils. All they need is a light rain or heavy dew to bring out a magical, natural, potpourri aroma. Forty five years later I have a 90 ft. cottonwood in my back yard that I can count on, all through late summer and fall to release that awesome combination of chemicals. All it takes is some moisture in the air and the wind to be right. Last night, mid winter, I dreamed about the family of screech owls that lived in the big cottonwood, in front of our house in Montrose. They would line up in the evening, four of them, on a low limb and make noise until the wee hours. I even dreamed the smell of cottonwoods and it woke me up. If you love your smart phone and your hybrid car, but you know not smells and odors that are naturally resplendent, putting technology to shame, changing your life without a battery, then you are incomplete: you have been short changed.