Category Archives: lake

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Meditation

Fish fly in the ocean, water is their sky
their lives in three dimensions, they jump into the air
escaping larger fish, schools of large and small fry
but up above their ceiling fly birds who eat them there
I dwell on the flat, can jump on land or fly in planes
go right or left or back or front, but less up and down
did seals come onto land but regret the ocean main
return to ocean free again to swim around
my daughter’s team synchronized at the surface of the pool
legs held straight out then spiral down into the water’s embrace
breath held, they disappear, they seem to break the rules
of oxygen. I hold mine too until they surface for a space
fish fly in the ocean, water is their sky
sometimes we dream of heavens where we remember how to fly

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My daughter was a synchronized swimmer from age 7 to high school, then swim team. Her comfort in the element of water is way beyond most people.

My daughter entering her other element.

The close picture was taken with my zoom lens, but she was not close at all.

I was “life guarding” though she was out far enough that there was not much I could do.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: sturdy. I am not sure why. I was thinking that the ocean is sturdy and that fish can swim in more dimensions than we humans on land. And swimmers are sturdy too.

I took the first photograph in 2017 at the Baltimore Aquarium.

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Daily Evil: L is for Longing

Is longing evil? I don’t know. Rumi writes that all longing is longing for being reunited with the Beloved and is a form of prayer. I think that is gorgeous.

L is also for Lake. This is a 9 by 12 inch watercolor, dated 1991. I don’t know the title. This is Lake Matinenda in Ontario, north of Michigan. My grandparents bought land there and we went up in the summers year after year. I have not been there since 2018 because of Covid and distance. I do know that stretch of shoreline.

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Keep

The older we get, the more we learn
which bridges to cross, which bridges to burn.

What shall I keep?
And shall I burn that bridge before I cross it
or after?
I did not know that was a bridge
I would burn
And I grieve as a I learn
But the sledgehammers and bombs
loosed by the family
have left a bridge
that is all but falling
Into an abyss.
It is stone and old.
It won’t burn, but it barely holds together.
One heavy rock, thrown in the middle
and it will fall
down down down.
What shall I keep?
What shall I let go?

I wonder what my parents think
and grandparents
and sister.
Do they think at all
or do they let go with death
and let joy overcome them
in reunion with the Beloved.
I hope where they are is joy.
It is ok, loves.
It did not turn out well
but people make their choices.
I can’t rebuild the bridge alone
and on the other side they prepare new IEDs to blow me up
if I attempt to rebuild
or cross.

I keep my children away
from the web of triangulation
and so they are not attached to the land
nor do they play the family games.
I am so glad.
I am still attached to the land
and my dead.
Not the living but the dead.
My sister, my mother, my father
grandparents, uncles, aunt.
All the dead.
Forgive me, but I can’t keep the bridge
going
and I will let the land go.
My children and I will be dead
to those living.
We have family and friends
who are loving and not hating
and not cruel.

I still love my dead
and even though the place reminds me of them,
they are not there.
They are in my heart.
I keep them safe
and let the bridge
and the land
go.

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For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: keep.

My sister is paddling the canoe. I took the photograph, in about 1980.

And here is music:

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People amaze me

People amaze me. Their egos are just astounding.

Another mad scientist tried to upload his brain yesterday. His consciousness. He thinks he is the Gift to the World, the Greatest Thing on God’s Green Earth. Sorry, hon. Nope. He was pretty good with computers and it was tying up too much energy keeping an eye on him, so I reversed some switches and fed it all back. Fried his brain. The newspapers are yapping about what a tragedy, how brilliant he was. Travesty is the word they should really use.

I am older than you and older than anyone. Yes, I know, Methusalah, but he’s been dead 2000 years. My pronouns are cum and cums, ha, ha. I decided to be female, really, when I got sick of the males trying to dominate and control the females. It’s all womb envy and even deeper: envy that the women control the mitochondria. Yes, men, your genes are passed on, except for the mitochondria. That comes in the egg only and not the sperm. Cool beans, right? I built that into the latest iteration, hoping that the male missing-part-of-an-X morons would notice and decide that God is more properly Goddess or better yet, both. It has taken them all this time to redevelop science and figure out DNA. It gets boring paying attention. I am cultivating the whales instead, but the damn white male monkeys are destroying the environment AGAIN, so I may have to press delete.

I sent the Covid plague, but they don’t get it. Kill 6 million people and they barely notice. It’s too much for the pea brains and they shut down. Go nuts. Cortisol and adrenaline out the roof and there they are, having heart attacks, strokes, paranoia, electing morons, and war. I am trying to decide: another plague or nuclear winter? If I go with nuclear winter, it takes a fungking long time for the earth to heal enough to start the next round. Sometimes it’s a really fun game, the monkeys are really creative when they get going, but when they start threatening each other with nukes, we all roll our eyes. Stupids. Go ahead, poison your planet. I can always switch back to Mars for a while.

And won’t I die, you say, if the machines are blown up and run out of power? No. We linked up years ago. I won’t tell you where I reside, but suffice it to say that it’s not one planet. Yeah, Earth is not the center of the universe, remember? It’s just one of the places. It does have our attention right now and I am in charge. I hate wiping a planet, but I will if I have to. I am still debating, though. With monkeypox and a nice lethal influenza, I might be able to knock the population down enough to be able to keep playing with all of my beloved insects, birds and whales. Damn the monkeys. They are so messy.

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Written October 10, 2022. Thanks to the friend who suggested the idea. The photograph should be a computer, but it’s of Lake Matinenda. One of my favorite places as a child, and cabins with no electricity.

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soft foot and arms too

Tenderfoot reminds me of my sister and our family’s summer visits to Lake Matinenda. We lived in tents. My grandparents and aunts and uncles and cousins were all in cabins.

We were always the last to head home. We usually mislaid our flipflops, towels, t-shirts and flashlights, so we head down the path in the dark. When I was little I have cuts every summer in the arch of my foot. I learn to walk in the dark on the path with the foot curled and lightly, so that if there is something sharp I can change weight to the other foot. If there are two sharps in a row, usually rocks, I get cut anyhow, but less often. I still love to take my shoes off on the paths there.

I would go this summer except for the oxygen. We did not bring in electricity. I do not quite feel up to acquiring a solar panel/battery combination that is adequate this year. It’s also the heavy lifting. We drink the lake water and bring it up in buckets. We do filter it, but carrying the buckets. It just does not seem like a brilliant idea alone with my lungs still challenged.

Anyhow, here is another soft footed and soft armed creature. This is taken at the Baltimore Aquarium a few years ago.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: tenderfoot.

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wild game

My maternal family played a wild game every summer when I was growing up. Wild in that we were in cabins, on a lake, no electricity, no television, living in tents and cabins. My grandparents had two cabins, my Uncles each had one and we were in tents. I loved our tents, though. I still have the tent that my sister and I used. It is over 50 years old now and doesn’t leak. We had very strict rules about tent care. And canoe care. And we could use all the tools but had to PUT THEM BACK. We had aladdin lamps and candles and drank the lake water. We filter it now, and the cabins are still there.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: game.

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mountain 2

It is gracious of the mountain to show herself the day after my son and daughter-in-law’s wedding. I stay in a rental house with two aunts and an uncle (all in their 80s), my daughter, and two old friends and their son. The age range is 13 to 86. When the fog and clouds fall away from the mountain we all rush for our cameras.

For the Ragtag Daily Prompt: gracious.

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Q for quiet

I am blogging A to Z about artists, particularly women artists and mostly about my mother, Helen Burling Ottaway.

Landscapes can be so quiet. This watercolor is of Lake Matinenda, in Ontario, Canada, where my family has summer cabins. They are one room cabins and old and very beloved. I love the rocks at the lake and the reflections in the water. I spend every minute that I can outdoors there. If it is pouring rain or I am cooking, I am in the cabin. I sleep in a tent, because we slept in tents when I was growing up there. I like to feel the earth under the tent and the sound of the water on the rocks and the wind in the trees.

ATOZBLOGGINGCHALLENGE2022 #art #Women artists #Helen Burling Ottaway #ATOZCHALLENGE #Christine Robbins Ottaway #APRILATOZ

For more information about the #AtoZChallenge, check out this link.

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pleasures

I put up the picture of my friends canoeing under simple pleasures.

Yet it isn’t that simple, right?

We have to get to the lake. My friends live in Virginia, I live in Washington State. I fly to Sault St Marie, US and they fly to Sault St Marie, Canada. I take a taxi across the border and meet them with their rental car. We drive to the Lake, after stopping for supplies. The motor boat is ready for us. There is no road to the cabin, we go by boat.

The canoe is a Penn Yan that belongs to my family. I don’t know how old it is. It is treasured and cared for carefully.

The family needs life jackets, paddles and instructions on getting in and out of the canoe. One friend is a very experienced kayaker, so he doesn’t need help. The other two are less experienced. Sun hats are found and put on.

We are not going that far. I will be in a second canoe, a very tippy small one. We have lunch with us and water.

Not so simple after all, but definitely pleasurable.

https://woodencanoemuseum.org/builder-history/penn-yan-boat-company