Short cold days bring wastrels to bundle indoors with heaters, toast and teapots, if they've got 'em, which I do, and am grateful for these comforts. The creek, or Bishop ditch, that runs through the trailer park is frozen over, and its mallards have not migrated to warmer waters but huddle in plump feather-loafs in the frosted, tawny dry grass along its banks.
I scratch out my paintings/drawings, using my photographs of Owens Valley as sources. I miss being outdoors, wandering around exploring, taking photographs and finding fishing spots. Winter enclosure seems to open an interior eye that rummages through the photos and chooses those most congenial to its introspective mood: watery grottoes and vanishing points on winter horizons. Summer sojourns are usually busy and pleasurable, but finite; winter brings me to the threshold of journeys that promise neither destination nor return, yet my mind continually returns to these still points of departure, as if renewing a promise again and again.
I scratch out my paintings/drawings, using my photographs of Owens Valley as sources. I miss being outdoors, wandering around exploring, taking photographs and finding fishing spots. Winter enclosure seems to open an interior eye that rummages through the photos and chooses those most congenial to its introspective mood: watery grottoes and vanishing points on winter horizons. Summer sojourns are usually busy and pleasurable, but finite; winter brings me to the threshold of journeys that promise neither destination nor return, yet my mind continually returns to these still points of departure, as if renewing a promise again and again.
