MOVE OVER HITCHCOCK

I always thought that Alfred Hitchcock's movie The Birds was pure fiction. Birds don't attack people, it's usually the other way around!  Humanity gets its comeuppance in this film, perhaps for caging creatures who by their very nature should always be free.

Horror films play on our basic fears. The scene where Tippi Hendren is attacked by Hitch's birds is unforgettable. It certainly burrowed deep into my unconscious and made me considerably more respectful of the avian population. With global warming in full swing, who knows what could happen?  A mutant pterodactyl facsimile might again soar through the skies looking for me as prey!

For the time being however, I have to deal with a red-winged blackbird. He's a handsome chap, I'll grant you that, but rather abrasive. He's a serious impediment to our enjoying a crystal clear pool over the summer.

Our latest endeavour has been to clean out the gunk in what was amphibian nirvana and to remove its residents, the bullfrogs. Transplanting our temporary boarders has been a challenge. Through meticulous scooping via a deep net, we've managed to relocate most of them in the Ottawa River. Unfortunately, some have decided they prefer our pool and hopped back 75 feet or so in order to sun themselves beside the now turquoise water. There's an unusual dance happening:

frog hop back from river to pool, 
flamenco scoop, 
glide across grass, 
frog plopped into river.  

Now I have done my research and guess what?  Red-winged blackbirds do eat frogs. 

WHY NOT OUR FROGS? 

 WHY ATTACK POOL MAINTENANCE (meaning us)?

Birds mark their territory and this fellow has decided that we are in his. I attempt to brush the sides and bottom of the pool or to quietly vacuum. I am minding my own business and don't even look up in the trees! Suddenly, a loud squawk heralds the black baron's attack!  His claws are extended.  They seem like bloody talons to me as he flaps his wings in my hair. His aim is good, even if I squat his body brushes against mine. This is not a singular event, it keeps happening over and over and over.

Now what would Tippi do?  Naw forget that.

I found a piece of broken eggshell on the ground, beautiful grayish turquoise with spots. He must be protecting babies somewhere up in those branches. Hopefully the wee ones will grow real fast and dad will teach them to fly in short order. Otherwise our barbecue season is over before it even begins.

One week later:

He's gone!  Well, not really gone, we still hear him but he isn't bugging us anymore. The eggs must have hatched.  Looks like summer might be tolerable after all....ummmm...did I mention mosquitoes?

WESTERN RUNNERS AND THE VIRUS

I have just returned from a sojourn in British Columbia. People in Kitsilano (peut-être "Quitsilano" en français?) like to run. Air displacement along the waterfront surely contributes to inclement weather. Stand in one place for a minute or two, close your eyes, and listen: swoosh, hiss, whiz!

Shoes striking pavement add to the sonority. Some land lightly and seem to float on air, while others reverberate like bisons on the prairie. "Jocks and jockettes" swarm like gargantuan bees in search of rare nectar. The level of human energy generated in this part of the country should be harnessed to light up the city.

I caught a nasty virus out west that I unfortunately brought back with me to Quebec. Microscopic fiends managed to block my ears, not a good thing when one has to catch a plane. The positive side? (I always try and find one...) when I'm neither hacking, sniffing, coughing or snorting, I experience wild, colourful dreams. A recent one was particularly disturbing and continues to haunt me.

A slender, turquoise snake with elegant black and red stripes, and tiny, furry, brown-grey bats gnaw on my thumb. I try to shake them loose but they refuse to let go. Their incessant chewing is becoming increasingly painful. Suddenly, a bucket of water appears magically out of nowhere. I insert my arm and swish it around in an effort to loosen their grip. Despite my profound feelings of skepticism, the process works! They drift away and I quickly remove my hand from the bucket. I check out my thumb and it grows into a small pink balloon with a fingernail before my eyes.

Even microbes can feed creativity.

THE AMPHIBIAN INVASION

Years ago, someone called me "Froggie" because of my French roots and the name stuck.  

My dad contracted tuberculosis as a young man, and spent a couple of years in a Sanatorium in Saranac Lake, New York. He told me that the folks there used to call him "Frenchy."  He would regularly respond with "Why do you call me Frenchy?  There's a Greek guy here and you don't call him "Greeky". He chuckled when he told me this story.  Dad had a great laugh.

The nickname Froggie was somewhat inspiring because it propelled me to collect curios of amphibians (kind of hard to collect Frenchies). During the recent move, I carefully wrapped all of my frogs and placed them in a heavy duty cardboard box. I have yet to unpack them. They are a bugger to dust and take up way too much room. A select few are out in the open but the rest are stored in the crawl space.

Meditations

 



















I've painted and drawn frogs over the years. They are interesting looking and easily transform into funky characters.

There comes a time in one's life when there are too many of them and I am beginning  to think that my involvement with frogs has led to a peculiar self-fulfilling prophecy. 

Many homes in Québec have pools, which are used approximately 3 months out of every year. Our winters are long and hard and pools help to nurture a state of denial. We ignore the fact that in a very short while, we will once again be freezing our buns off! In Spring we remove the dark netting that covers the sludge left behind after the snow has melted. A chemical shock treatment, a bit of vacuuming, and voilà; after a few days the water becomes clear. There's nothing like the smell of chlorine to sanction the arrival of summer.

Our new abode has a pool that no longer belongs to us. Bullfrogs have taken possession. We've counted at least six in there, small to quite chunky in size and not particularly attractive. Their skin looks very slimy. They toast in the sun but the minute we venture outside, they dive into the water.  

 

Frog thighs look human but the resemblance ends at the webbed flippers. As I watch the creatures swim, I am reminded of my father once more because he used to move his legs in the same way when he swam. Weird how the mind works (perhaps only mine makes these flaky associations).

The challenge ahead is to catch and transport these little croakers to the river's edge, and hope they don't decide that our pool is more to their liking.
 

THE IMMOBILE HERON

 
Since this is starting to sound like a nature blog, I won't discuss the immobile heron that I saw.

ZIP ZIP ZIP ZIP!  Muffle, muzzle...hard to zip up the brain and typing fingers though.

 


















mmmfffffffff.....

...ith a really good sthory.....he loothked like a dithney heron.

MORE SILLY ANIMAL HAPPENINGS

I know, I know, I know.  

This is becoming more of a nature blog than an art blog. However, I believe in cross-fertilization and sense that at some level, these observations will eventually feed my creativity.

Some rather eccentric animals live around here. 

I mentioned in a previous post that the Ottawa River is slowly creeping over our grass. Ducks think this state of affairs is akin to Shangri-la. These two, (a male and a female), are moving into the new pond created inside the limits of our property.  Methinks there just might be a bunch of duckings following mom around in the near future. 

But there are other unusual happenings; strange sounds emanating from who knows where? Taka, taka, taka, taka, is something wrong with our electric heater?  My partner goes outside to  seek out the origins of the racket.

 

Our neighbour's metal ladder leans up against a wire fence. Yes, a METAL ladder. A beautiful yet obviously looney woodpecker, (with bright red markings on his head), taps his beak as hard as he can on the ladder. Now according to a YouTube video, this type of behaviour is quite common. Loud pecks are more likely to attract mates. Hmmmm, maybe not so wacky after all. 

Arthur, the big yellow cat who supposedly lives next door, (actually the world is his oyster), takes on a hunting stance, rushes towards the fence, and shoos the bird away.   

  

Call me David Attenborough.

SURPRISE SWIMMERS

The "Rivière des Outaouais" is overflowing its banks and creeping up slowly towards our abode. It's worrisome yet fascinating to see nature doing its thing.  My friend and I went for a short walk to a nearby park a few nights ago to see what the river was doing over there. In some areas, it tickled the main road.
 
Beasties, two of them, (decidedly rodent-like) were in the flowing waters! Not beavers (too small), not otters (too slow); these little swimmers were decidedly unfamiliar. Hard to observe; they kept disappearing into the water for long periods of time. Eventually, one came up for air, swam around a point of land, and climbed onto tree stumps and twigs. There was no mistaking the little rat face, chubby body, and the long although somewhat flattened rat tail, which in water, seemed to behave like a rudder. I had no idea rats liked to swim. I sensed that these were not "run-of-the-mill" rats. 

 
I tried to draw it from memory but its proportions were off so I fooled around with it in Photoshop until it seemed about right. 

A bit of Google research revealed that these little aquatic mammals were indeed

Muskrats!   

Furriers used to make coats out of them! 

Does anyone remember Muskrat Love by Captain and Tennille?

Living here sure beats going to the zoo.

I GOT DEM OLD BLOGGER BLUES

Birdbrain

Ignorance is not always bliss. Sometimes it leads to errors than can have a negative impact on one's use of time, a luxury not to be wasted.

A couple of weeks ago, I wondered why one of my photo albums was on the web. I knew I hadn't consciously uploaded it.  

It was late at night, I had to get up at the ungodly hour of 6:00 ante meridian for work the next day. Stress was mounting, I needed some sleep BUT also had to fix this!!! The album originated with Picasa so I made a quick decision to uninstall the program.

BIG MISTAKE!!  

Some days later, I happened to look at my blog and to my horror, no images were there!!! Yikes, what the heck was wrong? I did a bit of web research and found out that this had happened to other folks. There were many references to Picasa. I quickly reinstalled the program but frustratingly, the images did not reappear. 

Picasa and Blogspot are busom buddies.

Woe is me, I will be spending some time over the next few weeks uploading images.  It's not all bad really.  I was not especially organized as a blogger and hope to become more so:

• My images and text will eventually be placed together in separate folders. Not done yet but getting there.  
• I am resizing images so they upload faster.  
• Some digital art will be reworked so there is a creative aspect to all of this.
• Links will be integrated into the text. 

Dear readers, please be patient when you peruse my blog, and where there are presently no images, know that eventually, there will be.   

"Everyting gonna be aright."

THE VISITOR

I had a visitor in my abode two nights ago. Unlike Walt Disney's creation, his coat was a foxy gray/brown colour rather than "Mickey" black. I should have screeched "eeeeeeeeeeeeeeek" but didn't.  I was enthralled by the tiny although rather chubby (hopefully not pregnant) creature. That said, I don't particularly want him or her to move in on a permanent basis.

The event brought back memories of a trip I took to Haiti in the 70's during the Baby Doc era. I had just finished an anthropology course at university and submitted a paper on voodoo. I can't for the life of me recall the gist of it but remember that at an artistic level, I was fascinated by voodoo's seemingly seamless merge with Christianity. Always curious about other cultures, visiting Haiti seemed like a natural thing to do at the time.   

I experienced my first ever culture shock. The people were beautiful, the weather glorious, but living conditions were extremely primitive in areas. Women squatted at their cooking pots, using leg muscles that I was entirely devoid of. Interestingly, Diane Ackerman in her book A Natural History of Love mentions in a footnote that the word muscle comes from the latin musculus or "little mouse."

It's normal to be a bit scared and vigilant in a new place. The hotel located in Pétionville seemed good, part of it was built in concrete, another section next to a hill seemed to be made primarily of wood. The room was pretty, although I found it strange that the bed was pulled a few inches away from the wall.

My travelling companion and I tried to get some sleep at the end of the day.  Note I said tried. In the middle of the darkest of nights, I heard an unusual sound in the upper right hand corner of the ceiling. Crunch, snap, scratch, gnaw, scrape.  I'm a light sleeper. My eyes flew wide open. Drums throbbed in my chest. 

Suddenly, everything went deathly quiet.  

  
Kerthump!

I slowly pulled up the blanket over my nose. An alien had definitely invaded our room. The bongos in my rib cage boomed louder and faster. I didn't dare budge. My ears grew big in anticipation of the next sound. 

The inevitable happened! The archfiend's claws scurried up the blanket that had been dragging on the floor and followed a natural path right over my face.

I woke up Haiti that night.

My companion took an unwanted crash course on levitation. A large hound started to bay at the moon, lights went on, and we immediately fell into a debate about my overactive imagination.

"Look under the bed", I cried!  
...and there it was. 

The mouse headed for the bathroom. It was a tiny little thing with jumbo ears and a cute waddling butt. Funny how it seemed so much bigger in the dark. 

My friend opened the hotel room door and the wee beastie hurriedly scuttled outside. It didn't like noisy people. 

 "Don't turn around!"

Like Lot, I did. A gargantuan black "insecta" nonchalantly crawled up the wall behind me and unfortunately, it didn't turn into salt. I now understood why the bed was pulled away from the wall.  

My first night in Haiti taught me valuable lessons. Firstly, if at all possible, choose a room made out of concrete because uninvited visitors tend to be quiet little anole lizards who love to eat the occasional bug. 

And, always turn the lights on before shrieking because what feels or sounds like a beast from hell is most probably an imp unexpectedly dropping through a rotting roof.

THE GOODBYE KISS

Artists have had muses throughout history. They can be quirky friends, lovers, or individuals whose attributes give rise to artistic inspiration.  

In my experience, a lover has the greatest impact on insight and can be a surprising catalyst for creativity! Paint splatters morph into buzzing, electric nerve endings.  

His wayward hair rivals pale spider silk shining in the autumn sun. His face, a familiar textured map, reveals itself through my fingertips, soft here, rough there, warm, wet, then cool and dry. My heart bellows as I exhale long, unremitting sighs.  "Will you be my muse?" I muse. 

The brain in love is an interesting thing.  Changes happen in the old gray matter and some of these are permanent. Sensations are heightened and we take risks.

Artists are generally extremely sensitive people at the core. Throw love into the mix and riveting work can ensue, assuming of course that the person holding the brush or sculpting tool is able to physically tear themselves away from the object of their devotion or desire.

Hazard a charcoal line that darkens to a deep, rich black, that tears the paper, that burns like a flare on the hottest of highways. Find the "Goodbye Kiss".

THE ARTIST THAT NEVER WAS

My mother was born in 1914 and grew up on a farm in rural Québec.

She is a wonderful "raconteuse" and tells me tales about about hating to bring the cow back from pasture at the end of the day, having to go into the dark, scary crawlspace / basement under the house to find winter eggs buried in sawdust that her mom needed to bake a cake, eating "galettes de sarrasin" with molasses every morning for breakfast, praying a lot, especially after supper when the entire family had to recite the rosary, heating water on the wood stove in order to fill the tub with hot water so that all the kids could bathe in serial fashion. I hear all kinds of stories, but this one is a story of frustration.

As a little girl, mom couldn't stop drawing. She liked to sketch on the empty spaces she could find on her father's newspaper.  She longed to draw in colour and repeatedly asked her mother for a box of colour pencils. They were affordable, but she never got them. Who knows why?  

My mother is the artist that never was. 

I asked her if she ever thought of buying a box of colour pencils after she was married. She answered no, it was too late by then.  After taking on the role of wife and mother, she expressed her creativity in other ways such as making clothes for my sister and me or embroidering tablecloths and other items in living colour from designs that she drew herself.  

Prior to my exciting stint in kindergarten, I repeatedly asked her to draw for me. She was an amazing talent that I never tired of watching.

I was lucky because she bought me colour pencils. Sometimes I even use them.  After hearing her story, I have a new found appreciation for the tool.  I will never look at colour pencils in quite the same way again.