The Many Roles Art has Played In My Life

I mark the milestones of my life with art.  When I look back at the various ages and stages I have been through there is always some form of art as accompaniment on my soundtrack.  I have been enthralled by, curious about, dabbling in, experimenting with and pursuing art in its many forms as long as I can remember.

At the age of 5  I first asked to take piano lessons.  I played up until about the age of 24 when work and family and finally everything else became bigger priorities.

I drew horses both real and imagined all through elementary school.  

My great-grandmother showed me how to crochet a granny square (and play solitaire) when I was ten.

I was immersed in horses for all of my pre-teen years (drawing, riding, and reading horse stories). I read  (more than once) every book Marguerite Henry (author of  Misty of Chincoteague) and  Walter Farley (author of The Black Stallion) ever wrote.  I figured out how to turn a granny square into a blanket for my model horses by adding chains of stitches to act as the belts that hold a blanket in place.

In my teenage years I taught myself to play the guitar  and played keyboards in a high school band.

I discovered boys early in my teen years.  Flirtation is an art that I excelled in naturally. As an aside there is an expression I heard long ago that rings very true with me.  It is: Girls use sex to get love.  Boys use love to get sex.  Neither is satisfied.

I wrote a lot of poetry in high school and college.  Very heavy on the angst of that period in a young person's life, very light on actual talent or craft.  Lots of whining.  Lots of grand theatrics about trivialities.  But like every person between the ages of 12 and 32 I didn't know what I didn't know.  I was my own person who knew best for me and I know everything so screw it all and get the hell out of my way.

Reading has always been important to me too.  When I was in first grade and my mom came for a parent-teacher conference I was told to wait out in the hall.  They left the door slightly ajar and didn't realize I could hear them.  The teacher told my mom that I would always be a slow reader, below or just at grade level.  I was in the remedial reading group.  The teacher just sort of shrugged her shoulders at the whole of me, what could she do?  It wasn't until four years later when a family friend gave me the first six books in the Nancy Drew series that I began to read.  The books were brand new, the spines hard and firm, they had that 'new book' smell, and Nancy Drew with her pumps and cardigans was so cool.  Then in seventh grade I had the opportunity to take a speed reading class.  I jumped at it.  The memory of my 1st grade teacher's words came rushing up out of my subconscious pushing me to improve myself if only to show her. (note: I have never remembered her name or her face and we moved away from there when I was ten but I have never forgotten her words!). [ Note: Choose your words carefully.  You never know what will stick in someone else's soul and once said, can never be un-said.]

Through my teens and twenties books have always been a huge part of my life.  I haven't read most of the classics but I am OK with that.  I do love Shakespeare (even took a course on the bard when I went to Penn State).  Emily Dickinson, ee cummings, William Blake are among my favorites.  My dad lent me "From Here to Eternity" at the age of thirteen.  The sex scene on the beach was shocking and amazing.  It opened my eyes to the power of words and sexual imagery.  From there he gave me The First Deadly Sin, The Second Deadly Sin, and so on.  I have loved detective stories and cop fiction ever since.  A boyfriend in college insisted I  watch "The Osterman Weekend".  Of course, I then had to read everything Ludlum ever wrote. 

I got hooked on photography in college.  Eventually earning an Associates of Arts and a Bachelor of Fine Arts Degrees in the subject.  The kinds of photography that speak to me the most are documentary, sports, nature, and portraiture.  I love math and science so of all of the arts, photography presses more of my buttons at a single time than anything else.

I combined my fascination with "the boys in blue" and photography while a senior at the Moore College of Art.  I was stumped for a topic for my senior thesis and out of frustation started thumbing through the yellow pages.  I got to the "public safety" section and a lightbulb went off.  I had seen a book of black and white photos taken in New York City where the photographer (sorry, I don't remember the photographer's name or the title) followed NYC beat cops and took some amazing photographs.  I called the Philly police dept and  amazingly they said, "Yes".

That was the coolest 6 months of my life!  I spent the bulk of my time with the mounted unit.  I even rode one of the horses on the lawn in front of Independence Hall!  I also spent a fair amount of time with a K-9 training class.  Then there were the two beat cops who worked "Jeweler's Row".  Maybe now that we have a scanner I will take the time to scan some of those images in...

When my husband and I were still just dating he took me home for that all important panic attack inducing meet-the-parents visit.  I was delighted to find that his mother's obsessions are quilting and cross stitch.   I learned both of these arts from her.  I stopped doing cross stitch out of frustration.  Frustration that I do not have the drawing talent needed to create my own intricate patterns.  Frustration at the necessity of always refering to a pattern (I'm a wing-it kind of person).  And, finally frustration that it aggravated my carpal tunnel syndrome so terribly.  With quilting I know the mechanics but I don't enjoy doing it.  I do, however, enjoy the design process associated with quilts.  Gayle (my MIL) and I are currently finding our way in this area.  She loves the actual making of a quilt but always works from someone else's pattern. So we are a good fit together except that she prefer the much more traditional style of quilts whereas I love quilts that are more modern and abstract.  Oh well, it is just another beginning.

I have gone on and on about knitting, dying, and spinning.  I won't bore you here with more of that.  If that is stuff you don't, in fact, find boring then try this link for my Dyed Bright Here blog.

I am  a HUGE fan of Twitter.  The previously promised post about twitter is still stewing in the back of my brain.  I will serve it up when it is ready....soon.  I have stumbled upon a huge number of writers.  Some of these people actually earn a living (or part of one) with their writing.  But, most pursuit it either as a part time job or just as a hobby they would love to earn a living with.  A few (like me) just find the ability to string together words in such a way as to tell a story, convey emotions, make the reader feel something fascinating to say the least.  Writers use the same words as you and I.  Or should that be you and me?  There is an art and a craft to choosing better words.  The best words.  And putting them together in such a way as to impart feelings.

Lately, I've been writing a lot.  Mostly because I've been forcing myself to.  It reminds me of the time I used to spend sitting at the piano practicing every day.  I had to make myself go through the motions.  The scales.  The arpeggios.  The sonatas.  The etudes.  The preludes.  And then, once or twice a week when I had the time and the inclination, I got to riff.  To just let go and play anything and everything that I wanted.  To create music that fit my mood for the day.  I used to play most of Elton John's greatest hits and they were good for letting go.  Sometimes I just composed on the fly.  Back in the day, we didn't have computerized, digitized keyboards that would take down your work as you played it and put in on the staffs for you.  If I wanted to keep something past it's initial birth I had to memorize it.  Play it over and over again, and painstakingly transcribe it to music paper.  Yea, that didn't happen much at all.  To continue the comparison between practicing the piano and writing everyday, I have found that poetry, specifically haiku, is the type of writing that I can just let loose with.  A sort of written riff.  Something tells me you may be seeing a lot more of that here in the future.

Another Piece of the Puzzle that is me...

It occurred to me today when I was explaining to someone on twitter who has interests in horses and also happens to be a yarn person that I started following because of the horses not the yarn that I haven't talked about horses here in a very long time.  

I haven't ridden on a regular basis since I got pregnant with Max (who is currently 16 1/2) so we're talking 17 ish years.  As a little girl (8 to be precise and I didn't feel little at the time) I begged for riding lessons.  We lived in Shaker Heights, Ohio and there was a magical place called Red Raider that was owned and run by Fox Smith.  In the summer it was a huge day camp.  During the rest of the year, it was a very active stable.  Fox made the rounds in a van or bus to the elementary schools and the junior high schools picking up the kids who were taking weekly riding lessons and drove us all out to Red Raider.  As an adult, I have no idea where it is I just know that it no longer exists as it once did.  Fox and his wife both died and the property was sold and turned into upscale developments.  But, I digress.

Once we got there, we split into two main groups.  Half of us had our riding lesson first while the other half had their flat lesson.  A flat lesson (or lesson on the flat) is one where the students learn everything else about horses from coat colors to parts of the horse, proper use and care of all the tack, grooming, training, veterinary care, even equine psychology.  Nothing was off limits and the topic of the week was up to the whim of Fox or one of the other instructors.  The group that was riding would be divided by ability.  Each lesson was a full hour and after both were done we would pile back in the bus and Fox would drive us all home.  He had the route home mapped out so that he could stop within a block of each kid's home and we would trudge that last little bit, dogged tired in a way that only happens when you are under the age of 20 and have been allowed to be immersed in that thing that you love more than anything else so completely.

To this day, I can still you the name of the first horse I ever rode by myself (Silhouette.  A tall statuesque black mare who scared the crap out of me but was one of the gentlest souls I have ever encountered) and maybe one of these days when I am REALLY old (not just feeling old) I will regale whoever I can get to stop and listen with stories of all the various equine characters large and small that I went on adventures with as a kid.

Over the years I rode at summer camps (Red Raider, Firebird overnight camp for girls in Bowerston, OH) and at other stables (Roosevelt.  An overnight camp for boys owned by Bill Lorrimer (he also owns Firebird), with girlfriends lucky enough to have their own, in pastures and fields, on military bases (a friend in high school lived in Columbus, GA and kept her horses in one of the barns at Fort Benning because her dad was retired from the military at some mucky-muck rank, at a touristy place up in Indian River, MI taking people on trail rides while we visited my grandparents for a few weeks in the summer, and finally at my parents "gentleman's" horse farm (11 acres on top a hill here in South Central PA).

When I wasn't on a horse as a kid, I was drawing them.  I suck at drawing things from my imagination or from the real thing in front of me but take a picture of it or put another artists rendition in front of me and I do a pretty good job.  

Life tends to lead us on wandering paths.  Sometimes we double back or cross a trail we have made previously. It just worked out that I got degrees in photography.  I stumbled upon knitting and dying, and spinning and everything else fiber related.  I've never not loved horses, I just can't ride one right now because of my weight.  And, while that sounds like an excellent reason to get the weight off (and it is) things very often are not as easy as they sound or look.  

In January of 1990 my parents purchased a 6 year old Thoroughbred who had been on the track (so the story goes) and been a dud and then been neglected when the guy who owned him grew bored with riding as a hobby and found something better to do.  He is 16 hands.  Which for you non-horse folks means he is 64 inches tall at the withers (the shoulder blade and tallest part of a horses body, not counting the head or neck). He is an average bay (reddish brown with black mane, tail, and socks) with a little bit of white on his forehead.  He was skin and bones when Mom and Dad brought him home and had rain rot on his back (a fungal infection from being left out in the rain for days on end).  His name is Yankee Doodle.  We call him Dan.

My parents are not wealthy but nor do they want for anything.  All of our pets over the years have been part of the family.  While we have never spent excessive funds on pet related things neither have we spared any expense when one of the animal members of the family has needed expensive medical care.  4 or 5 years ago Dan suddenly developed a very bad case of diarrhea.  My parents regular vet made repeated visits to the farm.  (Note, my mom is a nurse and as such can give extensive horse care beyond what the average owner is usually capable of.)  They hung IV's to try to keep him hydrated but diarrhea in a horse is a serious problem and it quickly became more than Mom, Dad, and their wonderful vet could manage.  The vet suggested New Bolton.  If you are familiar with equine sports or medicine that should sound familiar.  New Bolton is the equine hospital where the best equine surgeons in the country valiantly tried to save Kentucky Derby winner Barbaro's life with multiple surgeries on his shattered leg after going down in the Preakness.  This is not some little vet clinic down the road.

Now at this point, I had stopped showing Dan about 11 or 12 years earlier.  He has only been ridden occassionally since then.  He is basically a 1200 lb pet who at 15 years of age was already past his prime.

Mom and Dad loaded him in the trailer and ever so carefully drove the 2 hours to New Bolton.  Three weeks later he was finally on the road to recovery and ready to come home.  The total vet bill was somewhere in the low 5 figures.  

Before I got pregnant with Jake I had been losing a lot of weight.  I had gone down from a size 24 to about a 16.  I was watching the scale like a hawk with the intention of riding Dan again when my weight got down to what I thought would be a safe weight for his aging back.  Mom and Dad noticed and encouraged me to get back up in the saddle even though I was a good 18 lbs more than I thought was fair to the old boy.   It felt amazing to be up on his back again.  But, he didn't think so.  He acted like a much younger horse, almost to the point of being uncontrollable.  This is a horse who would do his level best to keep his rider on his back if he sensed the rider was green or nervous or unsure in any way.  I told my dad that something wasn't right.  So, I got off.  You could see the relief on his sweet face.  I had hurt his back and he had acted up as the only way he knew to tell he to get the hell off.  He was hurt and pissed.  As soon as I was off he was ok and later walked over to me on his own and we made up.  

I don't think I have ever felt so small as a person before or since as I did when I hurt him.  I had known I shouldn't ride him but did anyway.  I think that has a lot to do with why the ache in my soul that not riding causes just isn't a motivating factor for me to lose the weight.  Maybe one of these days I will finally get down to a weight that I feel comfortable asking another creature to carry.  Dan just turned 26 this past New Year's Day.  So, I doubt if I will ever be able to get on his back again...

Dan, my mom, and dad the day we brought Dan home from his stay at New Bolton.  He had lost a few HUNDRED pounds while he was sick.  He had gained a little back before they sent him home.

Saying, "Hello" and "You again?" to Buttons (Cute as a Button).

With Dad up.  Dan was never a jumper but Dad used to put him over a few fences every once in a while just for shits and giggles (for both of them).

Just being the big pet that he is so good at being.