Morning List

Every morning, right after breakfast, I should get down on the floor and meditate. A mere twenty minutes will make me a calmer, happier person, but only if I do it every day.

A long as I’m down there, I might as well do a few yoga poses—just cat and cow and maybe tree so I’ll be more limber when I go to my Friday yoga class.

Which reminds me that on Tuesday I have tai chi, and it would be a good idea to run through the form a few times so I don’t forget the moves. You have to do these things every day to reap full benefits.

I mustn’t forget to take Bisou for her walk, especially since she has recently gained one pound, and needs to lose it (as do I). Morning walks are best, while the day is young and the scents of the night creatures are fresh on the grass.

And then there’s Telemann, the cat. After Bisou’s walk I should bring out his furry snake and make him chase it for a bit. It might help him to spend more time napping and less time flying around the house breaking things.

Speaking of Telemann (the composer, not the cat), I need to work on that Fantasia of his. My recorder teacher says that I’m only allowed to skip practice on the days when I don’t eat. As with other challenging things, it’s best to get it done early in the day.

Remember that old advice for writers, nulla dies sine linea—not a day without a line? I should do my writing before the morning’s gone. I always feel so much better, having written.

Also, before my eyes get tired from looking at the computer, I should do some drawing. As they say, use it or lose it.

Then there is the list of unanswered emails that has been haunting me. The only way to deal with it is to be disciplined and make it a part of my morning routine.

And I should definitely take a daily spin through Facebook—why do I seem to be the only person who can’t keep up with it? I should check it first thing every morning, while I’m still fresh….

Zen Masters

Animal Asana #3: Camel Pose

This is my thirteenth year of yoga, and every time the instructor leads us into camel pose, or ustrasana, as I slowly bend backwards and try to find my feet somewhere behind me, instead of focusing on the breath all I can think is, how can this possibly look like a camel?

I can see the logic behind cat pose, in which you support yourself on your hands and knees and arch your back like an angry cat.  But cow pose, in which you arch your back in the opposite direction, doesn't look like any cow I've ever seen, though perhaps cows in India have a different repertory of gestures.

Cobra, in which those with flexible backs rear up off their mats, does remind me of the snake, minus the hiss.  And down-dog is not unlike a play bow, minus the wagging tail and joie de vivre.  But what does the supine pigeon pose have to do with pigeons, or the pretzel arrangement of eagle, with the imperial bird?

However, perceptions of reality vary widely between cultures.  For all we know a guy in a loincloth, kneeling on the sands of Coromandel and bending backwards until his hands reached his heels looked precisely like a camel to the ancient yogis.

But not to me, which is why I'm drawing this series of animal asanas, so I can stop obsessing about how no Bactrian or Dromedary ever looked like what I'm doing on the mat, and concentrate on the breath instead.

Animal Asana #I

Tree Of Life

 

When Words Fail...

...draw a cat:                                           

Easter Tizzy

 

Found myself in some existential turmoil on Easter,

of all days,
so drew a cat to calm down.

It worked.
                                                                                                                                                

Inspired By Don Marquis

"What in hell have I done to deserve all these kittens?"  Don Marquis

Alphabet

I've always loved those Art Nouveau alphabets in which a single motif is
carried through and adapted to each letter.  For those days when words fail, I've begun an alphabet of my own.  Here is the first letter:

Drawing The Ectomorph

This morning in our drawing session we had an angular young woman as model.  I liked the contrast between the long, spare lines of her body and her curly, curvy hair.  While we were drawing, the outside temperature went from 9F to 40F.

 

DrawingThe Human Figure

After four weeks of snow-related cancellations, a small group of us finally made it to the lunchroom of a nearby deli that imports, among other things, olive oil from my mother's village in Catalonia.

We were there in the early morning to draw the human figure, the clothed figure as opposed to the more usual--in drawing circles--unclothed kind .  But you can't put a nude model in a public lunchroom.  Also, given the surprising but real prejudice against nudes on the part of (some) of the buying public (don't rich art lovers go to museums?), it seemed useful to learn to draw clothes--the fall and weight of fabric, the convolutions of folds.

On arrival we, the painters/drawers, moved aside tables, folded table cloths, arranged chairs.  Then the model came, a wiry young man, a farmer who had "only been up once" with his six-month-old baby the night before. He wore good clothes for drawing--an appropriately peasantish shirt, heavy pants, thick Van Goghish shoes.  He was amiable and at ease, and the morning light was ricocheting off the snow into the room.  We got to work.

Figure drawing sessions usually start with ten one-minute poses designed as warm ups.  This is my favorite part of the session.  There is no room for self-doubt or second thoughts.  You're like a camera taking snap-shots, reduced to hand and eye.  You dive onto the sheet and thrash about, trying to keep your head above water, and next thing you know, you're into the  next pose.

After this come the ten-minute poses, then the twenty- and thirty-minute ones.  Since the model is a live human, the longer poses are less extreme and, to me, less interesting.  But throughout the session, I love the peculiar, almost devotional silence that comes over us as we peer at the form before us and make marks on the paper, and are transported into a universe where the eye and the hand, bypassing the mouth and tongue, do their thing together.

When the time is up, I raise my head, blink, and look around.  I smile at the model, put away my charcoal stick, wipe the black off my fingers.   I stand up and stretch, put on my coat and drive home through the snow-covered valley, thinking how much life drawing resembles sitting zazen.

Who Are Those People? And More Goat Stuff

O.k., a number of you, even those who know Ed and me in person, assumed that the two characters leading the goats in my previous post illustration were the two of us. What I actually had in mind was a procession of nymphs and shepherds. But because I was rushed (I wanted to go spend quality time with the girls), I only drew two people, male and female, so many of you naturally figured that these were portraits, despite major discrepancies in hair color and length, not to mention age.

(There is one portrait in the group: the faun. As Indigo immediately realized, it is an accurate and detailed representation of her husband.)

In the spirit of full disclosure, I should note that the female figures that accompany many of my posts are not self-portraits. For one thing, they don't look much older than high-school sophomores. But they are not unrelated to me, either. They are either projections, or illustrations of the eternally sophomoric part of me, or whatever. Just wanted to make that clear.

Now back to the goats. There is nothing like a couple of ruminants to make a place feel like a farm. A tiny farm, in this case. Blossom and Alsiki are smaller (though heavier) than Charlemagne, the rooster. And they are forever freaking him out, not to mention his wives, by leaping uninvited into his quarters.

When we built the coop, Ed cut a chicken-sized trapdoor into the wall. Since the floor of the coop is about three feet off the ground, he also made a ramp with slats so the chickens could waddle comfortably into the yard. No sooner did B and A see that ramp than they ran up it and into the chicken room, upsetting a red hen who was concentrating on laying an egg. I quickly ushered the goats out—not hard to do, since they follow me like puppies—and called for help.

“We have a terrible problem,” I said when Ed came out, all bundled up against the cold. “I can't keep the goats out of the chicken house.”

Ed looked around, thought for a minute, then said “Just take away the ramp,” and went back inside.

With the ramp gone, the chickens were reluctant to go out, which I wanted them to do because the sun was shining and I am a big believer in the health-giving powers of sunshine. I scattered a handful of sunflower seeds on the ground and pretty soon Charlemagne leaped out onto the snow and called the hens to the feast. Whether they would be able to leap back into the coop was another matter, but at least B and A were staying away.

This evening at sunset I went out to put everybody to bed. I was in the chicken room gathering the single (due to goat-induced stress) egg and saying my good nights to the roosting hens when B and A were suddenly with us. They had leaped straight in through the trap door, without a ramp!

I took the goats back to their room, apologized to Charlemagne and Co., and closed the trap door safely against foxes, coyotes, skunks, raccoons, bears, and the mythical catamounts that are said to haunt the Vermont hills. In the goat room, I served up molasses-sweetened grain to B and A. I returned Alsiki's kisses and discovered that Blossom, the shy one, will stand still forever if you rub her belly. They are eating well and looking bright. I made a quick exit, before they could push out the door behind me.

The chicken coop dilemma is not solved. We will have to outsmart B and A somehow. Like teenagers, they have all the time and energy in the world to figure out how to get their way. But we'll work it out somehow. There's nothing like a couple of goats to make a farm feel like home.