March Still-Winter Notes

I don’t have enough decent material floating around in my mind for a proper post. Just bits and pieces. Everything is very in-between at the moment. 

After spending the two hours before it curled up with debilitating anxiety, feeling like my chest was being crushed, wishing I didn’t have to go and wondering if there were any possible ways I could hide in a corner or fake my identity so people wouldn’t talk to me, I survived the show. I’ve never talked to so many people nor shaken so many hands in one day before. This was a good thing of course, but it did leave me socially exhausted - likely enough for a year. There were a handful of fellow CIA alumni from years ahead of me (80’s graduates mostly) who were wonderfully supportive and kind but I couldn’t remember a single name after two minutes of meeting anyone and it continues to bother me. There were a lot of old friends that showed up, former Irish students, and a good deal of acquaintances -  many of which I never had the opportunity to thank or even say hello to because not a moment went by that I wasn’t either in a conversation or being pulled over to another, so I’m harboring guilt about that. It was an entirely new experience, all that being talked to and met. Overall I think it went well (we did nearly make back the cost of the 15 big frames), but I wouldn’t really know, my house sits too close to the work for any real perspective and I’m too privy to all the mistakes and should’ve / would’ve / could’ves. Brógan came along because I promised myself that if I managed to have a solo show while he was alive, he would be there, so there he was. He was mostly bored stiff in a sea of people just standing around and not doing anything worth his while (like feeding him their food, or throwing things, or procuring ropes to play tug with, or pools to jump in, or running), but he appreciated the pats and scratches and attention. I’ll not make him do it again, I promised. 

Now that that’s done I’m not completely sure in which direction to move forward. As a result of “choice paralysis” as far as actual work goes, and being desperate to do anything other then mope over the endless winter, I’ve managed to bite the bullet and get the bulk of my website done. It’s still missing some things, and the “About” section needs to be done, but the hardest parts are finished. 

Kamccafferty.com

Thirty came sneaking around the corner last Wednesday. I don’t know how. It sounds like such a long time for how short it has felt. A very healthy reminder to slow way down much more often. And pull my head out of my arse. 

It’s still winter, though everything but the temperature would have you thinking otherwise. The robins are back and with them their sweet songs and happy whinnies, the sun traipses higher in the sky and stays out far past her winter bedtime - cloaking everything in that beautiful warm light well into the evening, the crocuses and tulips have begun to yawn forth from their subterranean slumbers, and the skies are as clear and blue as any day in June. But the air remains spiteful and bitter, biting and stinging any skin it can find, and the snow from two weeks ago is still hanging about. We feel like we’re living in a fishbowl whose water hasn’t been changed in nearly 6 months, but I would still take this over August. There’s no real difference; suffocating heat that keeps you shut up inside or biting cold that keeps you shut up inside. At least in the cold you can wear ten layers and still go out and be warm, but there’s not much you can do for relief outside when it’s 105F with 98% humidity. 

It feels like change is hiding only just around the corner, ready but made to wait. Whether good or bad remains to be seen.

(Big thanks to Jack mo chroí for keeping me sane and grounded and healthy, Brógan for being a trooper in a sea of people just standing around and not playing fetch with him, and Joe for helping install) 

The Dregs of Late-Winter: Current Musings

Cyclical time. My grandfather's time. His father's time, his father's father's time. What was it like to wake up to the sun, only the sun - the sun as all the generations before me, before my parents, understood it, as all the blood in us once felt it, as all the trees and deer and ants and weeds still feel it. The sun set free, set wild, unobstructed by numbers - by hours, by minutes, by seconds, by slots, by schedules, by money, by appointment, by construction. A world felt and breathed and lived in, a connection deeper and older than any idea of time. A privileged freedom I have never known and ache deeply for.

Forgetting what it is to exist in the world. Screens hither and thither, everywhere; every gas pump every check-out lane every pub every house every room every wall every pocket, beckoning relentlessly, syphoning life minute by minute into a void as the world ticks on. And the way the idea of shunning these shackles receives scorn as 'weird neo-hippie hipster shit.'

For the first time since we've moved here, just eleven days over three years ago as I write this, we had a chickadee come to our feeder. Thursday, the day after Jack's 29th birthday, the second anniversary of my grandmother's passing. I won't forget it.


These two have stuck to me for a few years:

"Only a few of us, amid the great fabrications of society, hang on to our really childish reactions, still wonder naively what we are doing on the earth and what sort of joke is being played on us. We want to decipher skies and paintings, go behind these starry backgrounds or these painted canvases and, like little kits trying to find a gap in the fence, try to look through the cracks in the world." -Georges Bataille (from "The Cruel Practices of Art")

"We have misunderstood the stars. Clocks make our lives a slow motion frenzy. We can't get off the screen back into a world where we could live. Every so often we hear the current of night music from the Gods who swim and fly as we once did." - Jim Harrison (I can't find the source for this, it may be a misquote, but either way.)

Slight Spring in Mid Winter

I’ve sat here for four nights now trying to put into words the trouble that my most recent drawing has been. 

Trying to find the words for the way its stomach-churning howl echoed through the rafters of my mind, splintered here and there by the continual stream of voices that have gathered there to do their horrible dancing. Locusts, insatiable and restless; humming, thrumming, buzzing, consuming, eternally.

My dad would say “better out than in” but it feels like dirty laundry. Like punching yourself in the nose, then showing off the bruise - and forgetting how you got it. A bad dream, a fit, imaginary. Was this real? Was it me? I can’t touch any of it.

Reaching the shore after this one merited tangible, palpable relief. I’m making a point of not looking back at it, either. 

Today we had a warm spell and I felt alive for the first time since Thanksgiving. Muddy paws and boots alike - happiness all around. Chickadees (please please come visit us) in pines, bluejays in beeches, the eerie silence of a red-tailed hawk overhead, and the unmistakable trill of a lone kingfisher across the swollen river. Smiling in the sun, pale and ghostly from the winter, eyes squinting and stinging, the world looking washed-out in brightness, laughing with full hearts drunk on warmth and fresh air, feverishly wishing from the soles of our eight feet that it didn’t have to end. 

Mid-Winter Clearing

It took eight days. Eight long, frustrating days of battle against brambles in my chest and thistledown in my head. I feared at one point that my skull might shatter from the pressure and cast a million fluffy seeds free into the house (which would have been much to Tipper’s merriment) or that I might awaken to find myself merged with the sofa in a very Kafka’s-Samsa-meets-O’Brien’s-de Selby manner. And since I’m given to shelling myself with buckets of frustration when I’m not keeping up with things (this pleasant little passtime of mine falls under the category of ‘nice things acquired along my three-year misadventure’) I was lucky enough to top the whole charade off with a day-long stress-induced migraine. The freedom is feeling human again is most welcome.

Jack taught me today that there are no past or future tenses in Chinese. That I speak yesterday, I speak today, and I speak tomorrow. There was a program on the radio that I was sorry to have missed which talked about how language effects our perception of the world and the ways we behave it. I  vaguely remember reading something about this a few years ago when I was poking around in linguistic theory, and how my thoughts ran amok considering all the ways in which our worlds are limited by this symbolism. 

I equally remember reading vehement arguments against this idea (the details of which were far too onerous, if not downright fustian, in vocabulary for me to have truly internalized and been able to later recall). 

I can’t help but feel that there must be something to it. Language as semiotic, as symbol, as stand-in, as mirror, as at times imposter, and even simulacra; itself defining what constitutes any given thing, rather than the thing itself being the matrix. Is it possible that society understands and reacts to its world primarily through the ways in which it communicates it? Is it possible that my understanding of and relationship to the world I exist in is experienced only through my learned symbolism of it? How restricted our understanding, our ability to exist. I can’t do much but offer questions, as I haven’t enough authority on the topic to offer statements, or answers (and lest I step on the toes of those linguists who might come parading to my house with torches and pitchforks).

What a language doesn’t have words for surely says just as much about it as the things for which it does, so it seems to me. I remember learning my freshman year, in an introductory critical thinking and art theory course, that language is a failure. That it will forever shortfall the depth and bredth of the truths for which it attempts to stand in for. Made worse in efforts to translate across different tongues (and, are not our own minds, laden with their unique lived experiences, memories, associations, each their own tongue as well?). 

I don’t mean to sell language short of its absolute magnificence, or doubt my own love for it. To paraphrase David Chrystal, there is nothing more complex, nothing a greater testament to human creativity and innovation, nothing so impressive that we could possibly build with our hands or tools or technologies, as our languages, and all their incredible variations. 

I need to stop now or this post will end up thrice as long.

Mid-Winter Brambly Chests Day 03

I haven’t been sick enough to succumb to taking medicine in at least five years. The last time was when my dad and I both came down with the proper flu and were stuck on the sofa with high fevers and aches - nothing in the medicine cabinet seemed to help, and we tried it all. Typically when I feel subpar I just try rest, a boatload of greens, garlic, and turmeric, and a bunch of water and herbal tea. Usually that does the trick and prevents me from giving any money to drug companies and putting their rubbish in my body. But alas, here I am, bitterly waving my white flag with a cup of Theraflu in hand, spiting the state of myself and the chair I’ve been stuck in all day. 

I’m probably making everything worse by getting all worked up about something that’s out of my control. I did some yoga and meditation this afternoon, with hopes that at least it would at least chill me out, but it only exasperated things; I found myself thereafter curled up on the sofa with half a working nostril, a spinning feverish head, a whole new branch of thorns in my chest, and asking Jack (who was having a much better day today) if he’d run out for medicine.

It’s only been three days and I’m ready to bash my head through the wall with frustration. I love reading, and I’ve been playing plenty of zone-the-heck-out-of-life video games, but I'm way over my tolerance for both. My head protests when I start to think about doing actual work, like rebuilding my website or working on a statement, and while sitting on the porch was okay for a while there's no way I'm going out for a walk in the rain. 

My sympathy goes out to anyone who has any kind of chronic illness or pain. There’s a level of strength required there that I can’t imagine. 

Well, everyone around seems to agree that their respective bugs have lasted about seven days. So, just wake me up Friday week. 

Mid-Winter Brambly Chests

Going to try this from the app rather than the browser so that I can upload images. So this is a bit of a test. 

I woke up this morning to a thicket of brambles grown into my throat and chest. It seems that even reclusive ways of life are not enough to escape the grips of cold season. I don’t know how Jack and I picked this nonsense up but whoever is to blame owes us vegetable pho. And a pound each of turmeric and garlic. 

And a refill of mint tea. As interest. 

The worst part is just being laid up. It’s not the nightmare flu that’s going around; neither of us has a fever or chills, but the soreness in my chest and lack of energy and swimmy head are just enough to keep doing much of anything at bay and it's driving me bonkers sitting around all day. Especially since the weather is having a warm spell that would be good for taking Brógan out.

I did get some painting done throughout the day though. This current one is taking ages - in part because of the holidays, but mostly because I'm not particularly fond of it so the work is more cumbersome than usual. I have my first solo show coming up in two months, and I have to have all the work done by mid February so it can be framed. As is usual for me, the more the pressure grows, the less I am likely to do the work. Logic. 

(Tipper’s favourite thing in the universe right now is rolling around tugging at hoodie strings while I try to paint. And drinking watery paint out of the palette. And scattering all of my brushes at night so I have to hunt for each one in the morning. She outsmarts every attempt I make at preventing this.)

On the bright side, we finally had a new visitor to our feeder today; a mourning dove, come to eat the seed I spread on the cement wall of the porch. I was so excited about it that I even called Jack over to see. If this were the house I grew up in it wouldn't be noteworthy - they were daily visitors at the ground below the feeders at my family's house. Only the red-breasted gosbeaks, orioles, hummingbirds, juncos, and rare redpolls would merit a summoning of viewers. The doves, bluejays, goldfinches, chickadees, nuthatches, titmice, those lovely red-headed house finches, and robins were unremarkable - oh what I would give to see them now. 

The sparrows’ wee chirps are very sweet though, and I appreciate them anyway. 

Come to think of it, I can't recall my parents getting an outstanding amount of house sparrows at all. A few, mixed in with tree sparrows, but not at all the amount we get. In the summer we get a few grackles and starlings, but it's been exclusively house sparrows otherwise. I partially blame the tree cover; there isn't much of it at our house, no security for the shy-er birds. Then the density of our neighborhood and overall lack of woody cover and natural plant life; houses very close together with tiny barren gardens, limited natural habitat for them. We keep the feeder at the front porch where we can see it - it would make no difference in the tiny back garden anyway. Tippercat enjoys it too - her chosen spot for snoozing is atop the sofa at our big front window, with its premium view. Today she started chattering at them as well.

This is my life from the sofa: Brógan's snores, Tipper's chattering, and house sparrows. I have nothing better to talk about. Here's to hoping these brambles clear soon so we can play outside again. 

Winter: Cormorants and Dickens

Today is one of those days that feels like it's made up of five different days, courtesy of too little sleep. The Tippercat leapt up and scared the sleep right out of me long before the sun came up and I wasn't able to catch it again. Thus, a sort of grumbling discontent and nagging anxiety was humming away within me for most of the day - I suppose there wasn't enough sleep in the night to fully snuff its yawping from the previous day. Amazing how starting the day off on the wrong foot has such an abiding sourness.

My dad follows the video blog of a group of adventurers aboard their ship Delos as they travel the world. In one particular episode they happened across an island loaded with seabirds off the coast of Africa. Knowing my love of birds, particularly cormorants (who are right up there with the wrens, chickadees, magpies, and ravens) he was excited to share the episode when he'd seen it a few weeks back. The crew remarked on the incredible density of the birds and the overwhelming guano smell radiating in the air in the seas around the island - which really was more of a very large and jagged rock that you could only see parts of, where the birds weren't covering it. They weren't able to dock because it's protected by Namibia's government and requires a permit due to the status of the wildlife there, but they managed to get the researcher residing there off for a few drinks and songs at the pub on the mainland. When I left the house that evening I had an overwhelming urge to try and reach out to that researcher and thank him - twenty years spent on a guano-soaked rock doing the, sadly, thankless job of monitoring 80% of the populations of particular sea birds. Twenty years surrounded by naught but sea and stench and squawking! That's some bit of sacrifice.

So it took me a great deal of rummaging through the internet and searching for any bit of information until I happened across a blog (here on blogspot of all places) that even mentioned his name - and from there another while of digging around until I could find any contact information, but the search was successful and so I took a huge step out of my comfort zone. I sent the penguin-man a long reaching-out message to let him know that a small someone on the other side of the earth appreciates what he does. I didn't expect a reply back (and had half expected him to be a cynical grump of a man after all that time, more resembling an attitude akin to the likes of that harsh rock than a biologist devoted to his life's cause at that point) but a series of conversations have since ensued that have proven my fears wrong and been a real treat. The cormorants and penguins and gannets are very lucky to have someone who cares so deeply for them as to devote their life to them.

I'm also glad I'm not the only human in existence who doesn't loathe the fiach mara, and finds them charming and striking in their own way (thank you, cormorants of Inis Oírr, for bringing your unappreciated character to my attention.)

It could be because Ive neglected a lot of relationships over the past four years - unanswered emails, unreturned phone calls, nothing but regrets for plans - living on my own version of this penguin island - and the guilt is onerous, so the warm feeling that comes from helping someone out, reaching out, letting someone know you care, feels stronger than it previously would have. Who knows. But making a difference in a living being's day - any positive impact at all - must be one of the purest forms of joy there is, however small.

Speaking of warm, I'm looking forward to curling up with a blanket and making a further dent in the library's copy of David Copperfield tonight. It occurred to me at some point this afternoon that I've officially lumped Charles Dickens in with winter-only activities, alongside listening to Simon and Garfunkel (snowy weather only), hikes in the park after noon (too busy for free-ranging Brógans any other time of the year), hot bowls of Flahavans, hunting for snowy owls and shed antlers, block-printing, blueberry tea, and anything remotely clove-scented. I only just read Dickens for the first time at exactly this time last year - A Christmas Carol, surprise surprise, followed by A Tale of Two Cities - and I liked both of them far more than I expected to. Yet I couldn't bring myself to read anything further once March hit. The warm air of spring came around and I feared that something in his language, or the stories, would be lost if I tried to read them without the frigid winter's night surrounding me. Alas, he'll remain on the list of many things that make me look forward to and enjoy the dark and bitter parts of the year, and I'll enjoy it while I can.