Twelve Oaks Residency 17

Twelve Oaks Residency 16

Twelve Oaks Residency 12

Monday we went to Horn Island. It was a halcyon day, as Anderson might say. It is still too beautiful and strange to comprehend, a love so true & secret you won’t call it’s name. Someone said it is like going to the moon, and they were right. Those photos will be for you one day, but now i can’t even bear to look at them. The world is too beautiful and people are too good. Coming back to the real world, the sky so close to the water, heaven got to be within jumping distance.

We were very quiet in Shearwater pottery. It had just been restocked, newly, brightly decorated bowls and figures and cups, horses and cats and folks. A mule angrily pulling. A woodpecker as a handle. Turquoise, white, trick colors. All of the pottery cooling and sparkling, creaking and singing and popping to us in the silence of Shearwater. A mourning dove on the ground.

Tuesday, friends and artists came and we sat under the oaks and ate lunch in the New Orleanian way, and it was beautiful and the weather held. A strange planet, woodpecker feathers scattered, a small green treefrog bright in the red pine needles. This trail known to me, its low spots and muddy spots, and fall-apart spots, and hopeful it calls everyone on back. The light is always changing and nature has a whole swell of promises.

Wednesday, today, it rained just like they said it would. It began when they predicted and it never let up for hours. The light came on in my studio mid-afternoon, the sky glooming towards night. The front and the back of the house became warm rivers of rain (puddle-wonderful,) then the fog began to move, the mist, like a dream. Everything here seems to be all-encompassing first, but then it is either a dream or a jewel, and that’s just how it is. For Anderson it was halcyon or almost-halcyon and i can see the unbelievable beauty of it all now, beyond my own simple wording or understanding.

Painting and sketching and thinking. A little restless and a moving easel. Climbed the rarely-used stairs, and visited every quiet and warmly-lit room, a new perspective among the trees and an audience to the rain. A pleasant & cheery blue bathroom with its windows to the trees. Upstairs seemed glad to have my visit, and i was glad to be there.

Obscured + defined out on the trail, browned & wintery with everything growing towards spring deeply green saturated and bright. Proud. The camellias especially, hollering in their greenery. The bayou is high, the water is high, the trees erased into sleep. Something about the deep water, the fresh rain water filling it to the brim & it climbing, made it safe. Made it clean. Barefoot we went in, often to just below the knee. Clear, cool, pine and bayou water. The muck all loved up by Providence and welcoming, hugging, even - safe.

This morning just before the deluge we were out in the woods, everything heightening in it’s vibrancy, our old brave turtle at his turtle crossing, as unafraid as ever. The woods getting louder before the storm, for most of the trail we were shielded. Thunder rolling holy-holy-holy, rumbling and grumbling, lightning flashing. Before that, we stood on the threshold of the house, after a run. During that run we was watching the rain come in over the bay and us all unworried. Back home, i shucked my shoes and pondered going or staying, does lightning hit the trees then cross the ground? and would we be safe? We are safe. It was safe. We went out and on and barefoot and gladful.

Not good at reading signs and not good for knowing much. Just out, looking, practically rolling in the pine needles with joy and needing. Numbers and constant turtles, maybe like crows, they are just there, on their way, always going, and it’s no secret to come upon one. But it is. It must be. Life, little life, little mushrooms we saw two days ago, then yesterday, then today, completely changed and beautiful. A bright mango color in the wet decay around it .

Branches and leaves, rain and trees, needles and mud, all of the contact i have. They brush my head, like a mother holding and petting her sleeping child during Sunday service. Many promises to myself broken. This new-clean-mud welcoming and holding and safe as we crush down upon their mud-hidden branch-bones, leaning into the cool water. Cypress knees with their moats, steady moors in changing waters.

The water is crawling towards the house from the bayou, but it will be days and months of this before it could truly reach us. Anyhow, i reckon. Mother nature, well, you know. It’s supposed to rain more tomorrow. All of the rain gathered in the back, at the feet of the younger oaks and an old magnolia has drained already, down the trail to the bayou. Did the trail come first from nature, or from folks and their engineering? A little laughing & sure river, a microscopic Mississippi.

An alien planet. By alien, just forgotten. All of us turning to our old ways because we have already forgotten - history repeats itself - it’s true. Before long we will all be plowing and sewing and planting and pickling again. We forgot.

The night colors floated down. It rained and leaves fell and all of spring’s creatures thrilled with the day. We will sleep through the night and see what nature has planned for us tomorrow. It’s supposed to rain.