Category Archives: Uncategorized

Silver Mist Man

Silver Mist Man

I stayed recently at the Silver Lake Resort in Washington State at the foot of Mt. St. Helen. The morning lake was misty and glassy, but the anglers were standing around drinking coffee and getting to go out after the big bass anyway.

This lone figure out at the end of the dock seemed to me to be from that liminal space between dream and waking where I feel one foot in each world.

Reading Questions__Wi.doc Nov. 29, 2004
In 2004 I still didn’t know Wi. I set out from the pathetic little brothel where I was raised thinking Wi couldn’t be far off. I limped my little limp down to the scruffy duff where I befriended the King of the Ants. He said that even though he had excellent long antennae perfect for the social media of the day, he didn’t know Wi.

I stroked his long, feathery antennae and murmured over and over, “Wi, Wi, Wi.” He wiggled and thought and finally sent me down in the dark culvert where he thought it was likely Wi went in wet weather. The culvert was dark and slimy with a special kind of toxic algae. There were a lot of folks down in the ditch coming and going from the river. I stopped rats and raccoons, small children and squirrels and asked if they knew Wi.

They threw me distressed glances, shook their dirty dreads, dribbled ginger crumbs and hurried away.

It was a long drop down to the river, and I was terrified of the way the vines shimmied in the wind. The blue rowboat had an oarsman named Paddy Olson and he said thought he knew Wi as he wended our weary way west. I slept under the gunnel and in my dream Wi came to me and anointed my feet and set my name in the stars.

When I awoke, I had several questions.
How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
Which is worse, failing or never trying?
If life is so short, why do we do so many things we don’t like and like so many things we don’t do?
When it’s all said and done, will you have said more than you’ve done?

Paddy said to use the old laptop tied to the anchor chain; he said to write down The Wi in my dream and I did that and I gave him the old green jump drive with the chipped Betty Boop decal on it and he asked Wi and I said really, I didn’t know Wi. That was Nov. 29, 2004. I just got this jump in the mail today. I wonder Wi?

Spontaneous Thought Forms


Spontaneous Thought Forms is a warm up game. The rule is you have to draw the very first thing that pops into your head. No editing allowed. I chose colored Pilot pens and Prismacolor pencils. After that each decision had to go down on first impulse. It is harder than it sounds, the urge to edit is so hardwired. No judging the results either. 

As far as I can tell this is strictly whimsical. The fantasy landscape reminds me of the recent  Alice in Wonderland movie with Johnnie Depp. 

Dream Street

Dream Street is really N. Grand in Eugene, my street in the late fall of 2012. It is an everyday street scene made strange through the magic of my i-Pad photo apps, but I don’t think the fact that the changes are technological changes the artistic drive. I experience this kind of art the same way I experienced drawing on black paper. I am accessing and expressing dream imagery, source imagery, digging down to the well where the listening gets really good.

This image reminds me that layers of history predate my presence here. Even in my own double decade, so many odd, dreamlike things have happened on this street: the time the car was set on fire in front of our house; the time twelve eagles flew low overhead and lingered to fish before flying on south to the Klamath wintering grounds; the days of snow and ice that transfigure the world; stories of our neighbors; stories of the days when the bottom of the street was in the flood zone and neighbors visited by rowboat.

We all live on an aquifer of stories…

Aerial Landscape with Crops, Lakes and Roads

This is a whimsical sketch, strictly to engage my bratty little artist within. She is unhappy that she has not been allowed to paint and draw for while so she gets to do what she wants for awhile. Some people call these warmups but I secretly know better. The bratty little girl has to have her way, then she will settle down to work. 
This little image is a magical landscape, with a blue brick road and a green cobblestone path. Plenty of lakes for swimming and apple orchards, flower gardens and forests. She gets to play here for awhile.