Conveying Emotion

I once had a quick text conversation that stays with me; it was about types of visual art. The friend I was texting with puts abstract art on the walls that I don’t like, myself, but it’s not my house, so who cares? She also has begun painting with watercolors, as have two other newly retired friends, and her stuff is fabulous. Again, though, I have never tried painting and have never studied it, so what do I know? She said to me something in this fast text exchange something that I do know: that she didn’t understand why people were attracted to realism (in photography or watercolors or any kind of art). Why try to reproduce something that by now, with technology, we can just take a photo of and be done with it? Turns out, I’m guessing, that’s why she’s attracted to abstract art, because it’s saying something that you can’t just take a picture of.

Whoa, there. That is not what representational art is about at all, at least not in my uneducated noggin. To me, amazing art in the style of realism captures the emotion of the person who viewed (or imagined) that scene. Or, much more simply (again, to me who has not studied this), it presents the way the scene looks to the viewer when the viewer decides, “I want to capture this.” The artist picks that scene because the beauty is strong enough that they want to remember it always, or because they want to show to others, or it triggers an emotion they want to always remember, or to convey. You get my idea, here.  

I don’t know a single damned thing about abstract art (other than that a professor who promised he could teach me how to tell a Jackson Pollack from a fake, if only I would come to his house, was too creepy to take him up on the offer). But, I can say that if it’s harder to convey emotions or impressions without a realistic model in front of you, then it’s got to be some super difficult art to embark on. 

I’ve always tried to convey my emotions when I take photos in nature. The shock I feel when I step around a bend to see the sunlight inside a valley that had been in shadow the other times odd been on that hike, the warmth of heart I’ve felt as I’ve been lying in tall grass all afternoon listening to songbirds. Conveying emotions in writing is easy to do when you’re traveling because your emotions are always on high alert. In place, it happens, too, though. 

It’s what I try to do with my writing, convey the strong emotions I feel in certain circumstances. I have zero interest in the type of realism my friend assigned to that entire art category: the type of blogging where I tell you that this happened over my week, then that happened. Bloggers I follow who do do that are really good at it (funny, relatable), but that’s not my interest.

Before I go any further into posting my manuscript here in sections like I did last entry, I want to convey the feelings I’ve had this summer, this first summer here in the house. My first summer in years when I haven’t been a nomad. 

I’m Retired

As I’ve been walking through my house at night in my robe, feeling the edge of carpet under my bare feet, the curve of the wall at my fingertips as I go down the steps in the dark, and I’m growing to love the house. As I’ve stayed up way too long past my bedtime, as I’ve nodded off on the sofa with Star Trek: the Original Series on TV, my knitting in my hands, and then as I wake up and knit some more and wait to see what episode is next, I’ve realized that I can stay up as long as I want, for the first time in my life. Not only because I know I’ll sleep like a rock when I finally force myself upstairs to my breezy bedroom, where the fan pushes and pulls the curtains and the moonlight comes in through the open windows, and my husband lies there sleeping in our bed. 

I can stay up for as long as I want also because I really have nothing to wake up early for, and this is the first time in my life! Yes, on the road we could sleep in some days, non-travel days, non-hiking days, non-errand days. What is that, maybe two days a week on an average week? But, I never could sleep late because a) medical, and b) if we were in a campground, I was aware of how close strangers were to us, either in their campers or in their campsites, packing up early in the morning, or, god forbid, walking their dogs earlier than I could get my act together to walk Banjo, which terrified me. So, really, this is the first time I’ve been able to sleep late.

We were so danged busy on the road, planning, driving, setting up, tearing down, exploring, for God’s sake. That’s a busy that Tracy loves.  But, for this exact moment, I am loving not being busy at all.

One thing I can do now that I’m retired, related to this nighttime subject, is sleep naked. Yes! And I love it My sheets are clean (never before have I had the time or laundry facilities to change sheets once a week). There’s no stranger sleeping a few feet away from me, no feeling like a natural disaster might come through to vault me out of bed, or a stranger knock on my door, or I don’t know whatever illogical things I felt like kept me from feeling truly relaxed enough in the Airstream that I could sleep naked. Before that, I lived with a child, and all parents know that you have no privacy with a child in the house. And, now I do.

I can also have sex with my husband without wondering if someone can hear us. Seriously! All the reasons above apply here, too. When we boondocked in the trailer, this wasn’t a concern, and heck it’s not been a huge concern even when in campgrounds; we’re not sex maniacs. But, what a nice thing to enjoy sex without being aware of your freaking neighbors! Because, believe me, you can hear people having sex in campgrounds, loud and clear. (And that one time boondocking on the Denali Highway in Alaska, when I that lady bicyclist who asked to share our clearing—she should have asked, “Oh, and, as soon as I set up my tent next to yours and lay my wet clothes out to dry, I’m going to loudly masterbate. That’s okay, right?”

Delightful Yard

Tracy has finished the major rounds of work on the fence, the two sections of privacy fence that needed finishing and the long section of picket fence he added between the driveway and the yard. Banjo can now be loose, off her tie-out line, for the first time since we adopted her seven years ago. It’s been hilarious watching her slowly figure this out. Mostly, gotta say, her behavior has not changed!

I am super impressed with Tracy, which is not new for me but hasn’t happened this way since we got off the road. He said he wanted to build our fence to save us money (that our small sections would cost $4k for a pro, and he could do it for $400), and of course I’m not going to argue, but the only thing I’ve seen him build is a woodshed, and it was leaning (it wasn’t supposed to). The man cannot hang anything straight, and we even screwed up sticking the adhesive Big Red Numbers to the front of the Airstream, putting the middle ones at the beginning, then having to wing that because we only had one set of numbers. So, I didn’t have much confidence in the fence. I didn’t even see him watching YouTube videos. He said that he knows perfectly well what a fence looks like!

And, indeed he does. We decided how tall it would be, what style picket tops (dog-eared, to match the privacy fence parts), and the distance between the pickets. Then the masterpiece: he put a shit-ton of hardware on the gates so they’ll open nearly any way we need, and they’ll stay open, and he cut the pickets to dip in the center of the gate so that anyone can see where to reach the latch to open it. 

We want to put solar lights on top of the posts and are still deciding on them (and I’ll paint them, like I did the rest of the fence), but otherwise I think it’s splendid. It blocks off the blacktop driveway and vehicle (since we couldn’t get a permit for a garage), and it matches my clothesline that Tracy also built for me. We’ve moved one raised bed and built another, and we plan on building two more so I’ll have a good-sized garden next year. The tiny fish pond is still trickling and teaming, and next year we plan to get tadpoles and see if we can raise a frog or a toad. I have to keep myself out of the hammock, because I’m 0 for 10 in nap-to-awake ratio when I get in it, so my day is shot. 

My pride and joy is the path through the woods, which I say with full awareness it’s just a few feet of path through a few feet of trees and wildflowers. Oh, but we both love to stroll along it, several times a day, pulling up invasive plants and enjoying seeing what new wildflowers are blooming. Banjo has begun to chase rabbits down it, and next year it will be even more full of blooms, summer-round. 

Chickadees are enjoying seeds from the tiny cones produced by the tamarack trees, and hummingbirds will attempt to terrorize them away if they get too close to the bee balm or the feeder. Tracy’s going to build a couple of bird houses with the extra lumber from the fence, houses to keep the house sparrows away and to lure in the house wrens and chickadees.

All of this is with a background soundtrack of men taking off damaged roofs and hammering on new ones. I’d guess 90% of the roofs in our neighborhood have been replaced this summer, thanks for that spring hailstorm we had made up of baseballs. I actually love hearing these masters at work, high on the rooftops, laughing and singing and working from dawn until way past dusk, some days. Our roof was replaced before we hardly knew what was happening.  

Space

I have two favorite pastimes n my newly found retirement: spacing out and getting distracted. The spacing out is fabulous: watching the fish in the pond, listening to the house wren fussing, watching Banjo’s tip of her tail wag just the slightest bit while she dreams. Allowing myself the freedom to get distracted is equally joyful: going outside to put laundry on the line, which I love so much it’s almost a orgasmic, getting distracted by picking tomatoes, putting them with a FREE sign on the sidewalk, picking weeds from the front garden, realizing those plants could use water (they get neglected because we spend time in the back so much more), then while getting water, seeing chickadees check out the bird house and wondering if they will remember to come here to make a nest next year, on and on. You know what it’s like to get distracted. I have no reason to stop myself from this kind of rolling in sensory information, now. I can let anything and everything hold my attention, for the first time in my life. 

This summer has been my first ever best-yet summer. I’ve always loved being barefoot and spending all day long outside, but I was so danged busy, from raising a child, to running a house, to working, to taking care of extended family. Then, on the road, we went places that were invariably cold and wet in the summer: various places in Canada and Alaska, the coast of Northern California, the Pacific Northwest. We spent one summer in Montana that was warm, but one on the East Coast and in Texas that was too hot. In refection, this has been my first retirement summer. I have been biking, and hearing bands, and exercising, and kayaking. But, also, showing down: sleeping in, staying up late, spacing out, getting distracted. Gardening, painting the new fence, walking the neighborhood, entertaining visitors, watching hummingbirds. Next summer cannot come soon enough.