After the Rain

Cedar needles

Juniper berries

Spider web

Palafox

Yaupon berries

Yaupon berries

Dirt road in a rain drop

Wild Berry Jelly

Beauty berries 

Beauty berries 

Black gum berries 

Greenbrier berries 

Greenbrier berries 

I made jellies out of these last fall with stevia, local honey, and arrowroot.

 

Foraging

I've been trying to learn about and identify all the local edible flora. 

This is a salad that I made today with some of the plants I found on my walk this morning. I'm really enjoying the new flavors I'm finding. Salads were starting to get really boring. That motivated me to look into foraging. The woods where I'm collecting has never been sprayed with pesticides or fertilizer, and the soil has never been farmed. My hope was to get a more diverse variety of phytonutrients than what I can get at the grocery store. The interesting flavors are turning out to be an added bonus.

This is spiderwort. The flowers have a really light flavor that seems like a blend of fruit and anise. The leaves have a stronger flavor like kale or broccoli. I've read that spiderwort is supposed to help with allergies.

 This is greenbriar. The leaves taste like a cross between green beans and asparagus. It's supposed to have anti-inflammatory properties.

In addition to spiderwort and greenbriar, I put cucumber, onion, spearmint leaves, and sunflower seeds in this salad. For dessert, I put strawberries, blueberries, and juniper berries (also foraged), and local honey in a blender, and then poured it over pecans. Juniper berries are a great anti-inflammatory. I could tell right away after the first time I tried them.

These are juniper berries with yaupon in the background. Yaupon is the only naturally caffeinated plant in North America. The leaves can be used to make tea, but don't eat the berries. Yaupon tea used to be a very popular tea generations ago.

A Peaceful End...

 ... to a crazy year.

It hailed three times, two tornadoes, and one month straight of 100+ degrees weather during a drought that brought an onslaught of aphids and their sticky excrement. No rain to wash that syrupy poop off my camper, car, and door steps where it got tracked indoors in spite of hosing things down. Then came the stink bugs to feast on the aphids. They invaded all the campers here in this campground like something from an Alfred Hitchcock movie. They were followed by the Asian Beetle that shouldn't even be on this side of the planet. After a two month long Bugaggedon, my camper was splattered with little yellow stains (from the Asian Beetles) and smelled like a sweaty metal working shop (the stink bugs). I'm not sure who won. I'm still finding their carcasses everywhere. 

For the first time in my 3 years of being a full-time RV-er, I was not a happy camper. But, I'm over it now, and these pic show why. They were all taken walking distance from my camper door.

Tangled Zen

 

Tangled behind a trained conscience

That’s holding firm

Good Bye forms cryptic blotches

On a journal page

An intuitive process for what can never

Be read or heard

As I make a conscious effort to deny

My treacherous heart

Zen - a state of calm attentiveness in which one’s actions are guided by intuition rather than by conscious effort

Overlapping chapters

 

Organize. Sort. No time. Just wing it. Gotta keep going... Where's life going? Organize. Sort. No time. Just wing it. Gotta keep going... Where's life going? It never fits neatly into chapters. 

Outsider

 Today, being the outsider is a good thing.

Today

Today

The Radio reminded me of how lonely I am

So, I opted for road noise instead

I Prayed

To fight fervent feelings for only a man

Who paved a highway inside my head

Caught in

A daydream as my car carelessly swerves

Peaceful pastures speed by unseen

Forgotten

Destination on winding, hilly curves

Frivolous burning of gasoline

Today

I'm thankful for a serene swim in the clouds

Cool, clean reflections of past mistakes

I've Prayed

Repeatedly through anxiety shrouds

Emotions exposed in glass lakes

Forgotten

Conversations meant to manipulate

Road noise that's easily dismissed

Caught in

A wave of guilt that only dissipates

When his perception starts to drift

Today

I can see him more clearly than before

But the Radio plays the same

I Pray

For a peaceful new road forevermore

A clean swim to erase the shame

 

Wishes

 

Bird song

Wishes flying high

In between notes

Separate you and I

Flawed thinking

Five years are gone

Wishes that echo

An impossible song

Empty wishes, empty heart

They're voiceless, vain, and trite

Remember when you said

Things would all work out?

Wish you could've been right

Sunset song

Wishes collide

A beautiful friendship

Washed away with the tide

Flawed thinking

Devoid of sound

Lamenting wishes

 Fall to the ground

Empty wishes, empty heart

They're voiceless, vain, and trite

Remember when you said

Things would all work out?

Wish you could've been right

Some More from the Doodle Journal

Twisted Perception

Twisted Perception

This rock turns in on itself
Parched and no pity
For those God condemns

In a dream
The old man is beaten and stoned
But not dead

I think they were wrong
But it’s my job
To clean up the mess

12-15-19

Happy Camper

My life is changing dramatically now. I've left everything behind, bought an RV, and moved to a campground in the middle of the East Texas woods. There are some kinks in my plan that still need ironing out, like internet connection problems and no phone service, but I'm so happy to be away from Houston that these things don't bother me.

I have no address now, though. Does that make me a homeless person?

I Crack Myself Up

Waiting for Lab Results

Here I am, nesting in my big comfy box of confusion, with antennae up, waiting for Lab Results. Even the snails are moving faster than I am...

I don't do mornings...

Some more from my doodle therapy.

Dialogue Abstruse

Dialogue Abstruse

Every morning formulates
Dialogue abstruse,
While Logic slumbers.

The to-do list erupts,
Foams chaotically, and
Shouts orders without priority.

The needs-fixing list
Seethes abruptly at
All the defunct remedies.

Then past failures seep in,
Bubbling up random sermons
With no outline or theme.

Reluctant Logic awakens
To the sound of Job’s wife screaming,
“Curse God and die!”

Ulcerated and burnt out,
Logic gathers the toxic spillage
And cries, “Everyone back to bed!”

Doodle Therapy

These are some of my doodles using the Automatic Drawing Technique that I mentioned in the previous post, where I try to draw without thinking about what to draw, and let my subconscious take over. I usually spend about 20 or 30 minutes on them, and then try to decipher any subconscious meaning they might have. The deciphering happens this way - When I open my writing journal and then look back at the drawing, I write down the first 2 words or phrases that come to mind. Then, I just start writing about my day. Generally the meaning starts to come to me, but then I'll either look up the 2 words in the thesaurus or some of the images in a dream dictionary, or both.

Processing Death - colored pencil

Regeneration - colored pencil

Alienation - ball point pen

This last one, I spent several hours on, because I had found that place again, that I knew as a child, where the hours would just slip away in peacefulness. It's been years since I've felt that way while drawing, and it felt good. When it was done, I remember thinking, "wow, I had forgotten how much fun this was."

I was talking with a friend about it the next day, and we came to the conclusion that as self employed business owners, we had gotten in the habit of planning everything, including our art. It's been about 5 years since I first started trying intuitive art methods with finger painting, and I'm just now starting to break that habit of planning everything in advance. It amazes me that what I took for granted as a child, has been such a struggle to get back.

Intuitive Art Journey

I've been working on creating art intuitively for the last several years, and it's been a struggle. I wanted to get back to that peaceful place that I knew as a child, where I had no expectations or preconceived ideas when drawing. Finger painting seemed like a good place to start. It was magical fun when I was a kid, and I thought it would bring all that back, but it only frustrated me. Adult expectations kept nagging me.

Acrylic on scrap cardboard, 2017 after Hurricane Harvey

Acrylic on scrap cardboard, 2017 after Hurricane Harvey

Acrylic on paper, 2014

Next, I switched to crayons. The Crayon Monsters were a lot more fun. I started with just a squiggly line and let be whatever they wanted to be. Sometimes that worked, sometimes it didn't, and I would turn them into what I wanted them to be. But, it felt like progress.

I played with melting the colors into the paper with an iron, and then layered more color on top. Hoping to do something more abstract, I created these next two, but again it only frustrated me.

Crayon on construction paper, September 2018

Crayon on construction paper with Haiku poem, December 2018

Then, I watched a Youtube video about Automatic Drawing Technique, and it inspired me to give it a try. You're supposed to doodle without thinking about it, and it's supposed to relax you to help you improve creatively.

Anticipation, crayon on construction paper, December 2018

I caught myself constantly asking, "what does it need now?" And then, trying to go back to not thinking about it. When I was done, the words that came to mind when I looked at it were "tight" and "tense". Not relaxed. "This is going to take a lot of practice", I thought to myself.

I decided to write about it in my journal. I wrote the words "tight" and "tense", and several synonyms that caught my eye in the thesaurus, but nothing came to me, so I started writing about the 2 very close friends that I've lost in death the past month. I found myself writing the words "what's next". Then it hit me. I'm trying to recover before the next storm.

I decided to name it "Anticipation", and wrote this poem about it:


Intrinsic self preservation
Is an undetected strain
Arduously tilling neglected guilt,
Hardened clay from past storms;
Desperately scattering seeds
That bloom magnificently.

What’s next?
Forced recovery
Before another storm hits.

This has been the beginning of what I call Doodle Therapy, and it seems like the more I do it, the easier it gets. Just about every night, I spend 20 or 30 minutes doodling in my journal, and then I write about it. It amazes me every time, that what looks like a bunch of scribbles actually has meaning to my subconscious. The fact that it has meaning seems to be quieting those adult expectations. I think I'm on the right track now.

Crayon Monsters

Diva Daphne has a cold.

Kaos is in a hurry.

Gilt is watching you.

Houston Flood 2017

Refrigerators float.

She hated that refrigerator. It hummed and groaned twice as loud as the old one, and it's door handle had to be taped down even though it was still brand new. The old one lasted 30 years and the door handle never slipped off.

Now, the hated one lays face down on the kitchen floor, humiliated. She feels its loss. Tells a story about a man who once saved his family by removing the refrigerator door, laying it on its back, and then loading his family inside to escape flood waters.

This one, though, never served such a heroic purpose. It, and its rotting contents, have been washed over with a slimy layer of sewerage silt, in a house who's brief submergence devastated everything.  

Artist Trading Cards

Some ATC's I made for a swap on Facebook.

Gold Fish - painted with metallic and iridescent acrylics.

Duck Feetn' It - same acrylics.

Fire Water - water color and ink.

Scenic View - water color and gel pen.

Bathing Fairy - water color and gel pen.

Eye to Eye and Whirlpool pointillism - ink

90 Degrees (32 C) in Februrary

Went to Mercer Arboretum yesterday. The trees were covered with a bright orange moss in one of the oxbows, adding cheer to the winter grey. I guess the unusual weather has created perfect conditions for this.

All the locals were sunbathing and napping.

The water was oily from all the Cypress leaves.

The warm breeze gently blew the bog's damp musty aroma across the Cypress knees, providing the perfect escape for the day.