Thanks to Kim and Jane (and welcome Jane!) I now have a link to the new Rescue Me promo spot. Here it is. I just love this ad:

I know some people can’t see videos when I embed them here, so try this link:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ry_IqKFSW5g

I took a painting class once, in college. It was when I was at Bennington. This was an “Introduction to Painting” class and the other students, like myself, were not art majors and had little previous experience drawing or painting. The teacher wanted us to learn about light. She started us working with charcoal on rough white drawing paper. We were to draw trees with special attention to shadows and light. She made us notice the way the bark was rough and mottled with shades of gray and brown on the side where the sun fell upon it, but was just a flat black surface on the shaded side. She set up still-life arrangements in the studio. A clear vase, a couple of green pears, a white bowl on a bunched-up red velvety cloth draped across a table. She shone a light on the tableau and had us just use charcoal and chalk to draw the scene. She wanted us to notice the shapes and patterns, but most of all she wanted us to be aware of light. It seemed to be the most important, the most fundamental thing in painting.

As I’ve mentioned in previous posts, I love the unique brilliance of winter light and have been trying to capture it in photographs. My hope is that I can use the photos to help me with some scenes I’ve been working on. I’ve found that my favorite passages in books involve the artful depiction of shadow and light. I love when a writer uses light skillfully to pull us into a scene. Here is an example of a beautiful use of color and pattern and light from a short story by John Updike called “After the Storm.”

“The room was radiant. Beyond the white mullions and the curtains of dotted swiss, pinned back with metal flowers painted white, the sky was undiluted blue. I thought, this morning has never occurred before, and I jubilantly felt myself to be on the prow of a ship cleaving the skyey ocean of time.”

Now, brace yourself for something quite incredible. This is one of the last paragraphs in the story and it shows why Updike is considered a true master of literature. The story, by the way, is told from the perspective of a young boy who is now in bed with a fever. I can’t help but believe it’s an autobiographical rendering of the birth of the author’s impulse to absorb beauty and nature and light in order to reproduce it later, with words.

“I turned my head away and looked through the window. In time, my father appeared in this window, an erect figure dark against the snow. His posture made no concession to the pull underfoot; upright he waded out through our yard and past the mailbox and up the hill until he was lost to my sight behind the trees of our orchard. The trees took white on their sun side. The two telephone wires diagonally cut the blank blue of the sky. The bare stone wall was a scumble of umber; my father’s footsteps thumbs of white in white. I knew what this scene was – a patch of Pennsylvania in 1947 – and yet I did not know, was in my softly fevered state mindlessly soaked in a rectangle of colored light. I burned to paint it, just like that, in its puzzle of glory; it came upon me that I must go to Nature disarmed of perspective and stretch myself like a large transparent canvas upon her in the hope that, my submission being perfect, the imprint of a beautiful and useful truth would be taken.”

The idea of the author being perfectly submissive to the scene, being transparent. What a lesson for me.

While typing this, my Word program protested the use of the words “skyey” and “scumble.” These aren’t words, declared Microsoft Word.

Tell that to John Updike, Word!.

What could better describe a stonewall in winter than a “scumble of umber?”

Here are some photos I took yesterday in the late afternoon, when there were a great many shadows.

As I’ve mentioned before, when I go on YouTube there are always horse and other animal videos on my screen, because those are the types of videos I view most. Today, I saw this, which is adorable. Enjoy.

“And they won’t be going any faster at Ascot this afternoon, believe me!”

I have been really tied up in this book but am almost finished! Haven’t had much time to blog, but here are some photos.

I’ve said it before, but I must say again that I love the light in winter. Everywhere there are my favorite shades of white and gray and the entire spectrum of blue. I think I have the opposite of Seasonal Affective Disorder, which makes some people depressed in winter. I feel so much energy when it’s bright and white like this. In the summer, the light seems thin and filtered and it’s so effing hot! That’s when I’m S.A.D.

I spent all morning writing. It was grey and cold outside. Raw and damp. I left my house and it began to snow a little, and then it rained. It poured. Then it stopped raining and instantly the sun was shining through these big smokey clouds!

It was almost dark, but it was as if the day had regrets about its foul and tempestuous displays of mood, and wanted to start all over. The light felt like dawn.

I decided to drive by my favorite farm because sometimes there’s a beautiful sunset there. Today, there was no sunset but this wonderfully ominous blanket of clouds was unrolling above the old barns, threatening more …stuff.

I drove home delightfully haunted. These trees seem to be strung limb to limb with ghosts sometimes, on spooky days like today.

Glad I had my camera in the car. Here’s the beginning of a Robert Frost poem that suits the day. The rest of the poem can be found here.

A Line-storm Song
by Robert Frost

The line-storm clouds fly tattered and swift,
The road is forlorn all day,
Where a myriad snowy quartz stones lift,
And the hoof-prints vanish away.
The roadside flowers, too wet for the bee,
Expend their bloom in vain.
Come over the hills and far with me,
And be my love in the rain.
“Come over the hills and far with me,
and be my love in the rain.”
sigh

Put…the sock…down!

Following up on my Dog Whisperer post from a few days ago, there was a fascinating profile piece in the New Yorker magazine a few years ago about Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer. If you click on the link you will only be able to read an abstract of the piece but if you subscribe you can read the whole article.

The author of the article showed dancers and movement specialists silent footage of Cesar walking around and working with dogs. They were really amazed at his self-carriage and his sense of balance when he moves. Millan is always trying to teach the people he works with how to carry themselves. I’m fascinated with this because it’s incredibly important when working with animals, especially horses. When riding or leading horses, one must always have a good erect posture and strong positive energy or things can go really badly. Of course when they turn into pasture potatoes like my guys you can go limping into their stalls and sob into their necks, if you’re having a bad day, and they’ll just comfort you with the sound of their steady breaths and thoughtful chewing.

But the language of animals is all in their bodies and they read our bodies to learn what we want from them. Our voices are just noise. That’s why Cesar doesn’t say, “good boy”, “bad boy,” etc. He just uses that hissing sound which mammals are naturally alarmed by. And then he uses his body to communicate with the dogs. I love when he walks into a room and these really spoiled, dominant dogs get this holy shit look about them. His body and posture changes theirs instantly. This is so interesting to me.

Look at the posture and self-carriage of people with naturally dominant personalities – like cops, firemen, old-school nuns! Nobody taught them to carry themselves that way, they just do. I try to practice it always when meeting animals I don’t know, this sort of calm, assertive posture. It makes them feel safer in your presence. Humans think coddling and soothing noises makes animals feel safer, but it makes them feel very unsafe, as they worry that they are expected to be in charge, and they are naturally insecure – like all of us.

Okay, now back to work.

Do you ever get that not-so-fresh feeling?

Ugggggggg! I just arrived home and was greeted by the girls whose muzzles were caked with mud (or worse). I was going to watch a movie tonight. Now must bathe dogs. Maybe I’ll just put them back outside and they’ll put the mud back where they got it.

I have blogged before about my admiration for Cesar Millan, the Dog Whisperer. Well, I’m watching a marathon and have just seen the all-time best episode of the Dog Whisperer! It’s the one with the aggressive Rottie named Apollo, who bonded with a teenaged girl – an animal lover with a HUGE heart who works at the kill shelter where the dog was about to be destroyed. Has anybody seen this one? The ending! I won’t give it away. I’m covered in goosebumps.

Meanwhile, I have whispered my girls into a “calm, submissive” state.

I managed to photograph the one part of Mark’s body that isn’t caked in mud:

His left ear. I love horses’ ears. LOVE.

Here’s the rest of him:

I bet you didn’t know horses could have a mullet hairdo. Mark is seriously stuck in the 80s with his look.

We’ve had a few warm days. All the snow is gone. We now have mud.

In about a month, when the horses really start shedding, I like it when the mud dries to their coats like this because when you brush them it helps pull off the winter coat. Now it’s just a mess.

Hmmmm. Groom horses ….or blog?

The first, by Pablo Neruda:

Brace yourself for this one. I LOVE this poem, but it’s a little disturbing:

Man and Wife
by Robert Lowell

Tamed by Miltown, we lie on Mother’s bed;
the rising sun in war paint dyes us red;
in broad daylight her gilded bed-posts shine,
abandoned, almost Dionysian.
At last the trees are green on Marlborough Street,
blossoms on our magnolia ignite
the morning with their murderous five days’ white.
All night I’ve held your hand,
as if you had
a fourth time faced the kingdom of the mad—
its hackneyed speech, its homicidal eye—
and dragged me home alive. . . Oh my Petite,
clearest of all God’s creatures, still all air and nerve:
you were in your twenties, and I,
once hand on glass
and heart in mouth,
outdrank the Rahvs in the heat
of Greenwich Village, fainting at your feet—
too boiled and shy
and poker-faced to make a pass,
while the shrill verve
of your invective scorched the traditional South.
Now twelve years later, you turn your back.
Sleepless, you hold
your pillow to your hollows like a child;
your old-fashioned tirade—
loving, rapid, merciless—
breaks like the Atlantic Ocean on my head

And finally a very sweet love poem by Emily Dickinson:
Heart, We Will Forget Him
by Emily Dickinson

Heart, we will forget him,
You and I, tonight!
You must forget the warmth he gave,
I will forget the light.
When you have done pray tell me,
Then I, my thoughts, will dim.
Haste! ‘lest while you’re lagging
I may remember him!