Month: May 2002

  • Click thumbnails for slightly larger images.  Some of these are
    available in much bigger sizes.  For the WAY BIG images, click the
    URL beneath the thumbnail.

    almost just sky

    albino moose (not one of mine — photo credit Richard Pixley)

    XLG http://x7b.xanga.com/3a38367227233884177/w854048.jpg

    autumn haze

    fall morning

    “rabbit run” — the muskeg that surrounds us here is crisscrossed by these tunnels the arctic hares make through the brush

    sunrise color

    ice-crusted shallows in the flooded muskeg across the road from my
    home, April 29, 2005 — I recommend clicking for the big version of
    this one, because the detail just doesn’t show in the thumbnail.

    XLG http://xfa.xanga.com/30a8766749d329891903/w7486285.jpg

    sunset over Kashwitna Lake, 1 AM, May 20, 2005 — facing just a little
    west of due north, mountain in silhouette on right is Mount McKinley,
    AKA Denali

    LG http://xd2.xanga.com/eb4834f34813110076023/b7596987.jpg
    this one is also available in a wallpaper size http://xd2.xanga.com/eb4834f34813110076023/w7596987.jpg

    summer sky, taken from my roof in July while my son and I were repairing it

    Kenai River

    an extraordinary winter sunset (no filters or image manipulation — natural light)

    LG
    http://x67.xanga.com/80d89425c063513619979/b9784524.jpg

    same sunset, different angle

    LG http://x88.xanga.com/4a008b26d83b713620108/b9784602.jpg

    one of my first attempts at a digital self-portrait, taken same time as 2 shots above

    bear –the story of how I got this shot is HERE

    fireweed in foreground, with me getting water at the neighborhood spring, behind

    Koji and me

  • Santa Claus in Questionable Taste


    Your sleigh pulling days are over.

    post updated on 12/21/2008

  • ART vs COMMERCE


    The people who have been reading my autobiographical bits seem to like them.  phunkypuhnk thinks I’ve had an interesting life. I agree.


    The biggest reason for my “interesting life” was probably my father.  When the doctors told my parents their baby wouldn’t live to grow up, my mother immediately went into overprotective mode. My father thought that if my life was to be brief, it should be full.  He encouraged me to try new things, take risks, follow my dreams; and he watched over me as I tried my wings. 


    When I was seven, he died.  I was left with his philosophy of “go for it”, but without his mature stability or protection.  I’ve missed him, and I’ve dented and singed those wings many times, but I’m still flying.  It has not only been interesting, it has been educational, inspiring, and fun.


    About half my lifetime ago, people started telling me I should “write a book”.  In my blogs here, I’ve shared a few bits of one of my unborn books.  I’ll be back later with more, but for now I need to spend some time on more material creative efforts.  The old fart (that’s an affectionate term, by the way) spends the summer tourist season selling stuff to visitors.  I make some of the stuff he sells.  He’s out of earrings, so I’ll be channeling my creative energy in that direction for a while.


    I won’t be gone, just preoccupied.  Seeya!

  • Bear in mind, this is but part of a single chapter of my memoirs.  It happened not long after I had gotten out on parole,  then violated that parole and went on the lam.  The chapter-head spoonerism gets explained in the latter, still-unwritten, portion of this chapter.


    A Loaf of Lettuce and a Head of Bread– Dec., 1971


    As a child, I talked silently in my head to God, asking all the questions my parents couldn’t answer for me. It had been years since the day I’d stopped talking to God, since I’d grown angry at him–that misguided excursion into evangelical thought. I’d been fasting and had little in the way of fluids in the boxcars and railroad yards from Indio to San Antonio. We’d turned our pockets out, Rocky and Robbie and I and the half dozen or so hoboes, pooled our money and sent Robbie across with the buck and change to a mom and pop store near a siding in West Texas, but the train had pulled out before he got back with the candy bars.


    Rocky and I and our new-found hobo friend/guide split from the others. The three of us stood beside the tracks where trains slowed on entering the yards, yelling Robbie’s name as the cars clattered past.


    We’d not been there very long, just the second train through, when Robbie walked up behind us with candy bars. Ecstatic reunion, frenzied noshing, and then the hobo showed us where to quickly and stealthily get a drink of clean water. Next, he led us away to a more protected spot where we could wash hands and faces in a puddle near a leaky pipe. The guys’ faces looked somewhat better, I thought, there in the dark, but as the dawn came shortly after that, I could see what I’d been feeling since the rinse. We had just smeared the dirt.


    There I was, sleepless for days, homeless, hungry, penniless, and wanted by the law. I’d been warily ducking and dodging through the darkness, through row upon row of freight cars, some of them in motion. The hobo’s anxiety infected us as he quietly warned us to move cautiously and avoid detection by the bulls. I was scared. I was filthy from graphite particles picked up in a boxcar. The hoboes had said it was machine lubricant that sifted out of shipping crates. It itched everywhere.


    Our guiding hobo stopped. When we all caught up to him, he explained that ahead was the track on which the train to Houston was just beginning to roll. Houston was where we’d get off and hitchhike to Galveston where we all hoped to find work on the shrimpers. We just had to stand by, he said, and watch for an open boxcar. We didn’t want to have to ride on an open flat or gondola, or huddled among the cars on an auto transport. As the sun rose over the string of rail cars and warmed our dirty faces, we looked at each other…and dissolved in laughter at the collection of smudges, streaks and runnels. And I realized then I was happier at that moment than I’d ever been before.


    As soon as that thought crossed my mind, something else came to me, in that soundless, wordless “voice of God” I’d conversed with as a child. I knew then that I needed none of the material provisions for security that I’d hungered and worked and schemed for until then. I had freedom and I had friends, and precious little more than the dirty clothes I wore. And I was happy!


    My life has had its share of small epiphanies, everyday “Aha!” moments of inspiration or realization that everyone has. But when I heard that resonant voice deep in my soul there in the freight yard, it changed everything for me.


    The Universe supports me. God told me so! The gist of the message was that as long as I am true to myself and my buds, the things I need for my survival will be there for me. The rest of it:  the bells and whistles, comforts and luxuries, might be harder to come by, but the basic package was a given. I started living that truth that day and it wasn’t until years later that I learned this path was well known to many others and had a name: Living in the Flow.


    Furtive before, scared and manipulative, neither trusting nor trustworthy, I now grew a fast set of ethics and started saying straight out what I think and what I need. I would no longer make promises I couldn’t keep and if I’d make a promise, I’d keep it. I’d never again steal from a friend or an associate who trusted me. I’d share what I had with those who had less. I’d rip off only those big corporations with shrinkage insurance. No more shoplifting in any old mom’n’pop or pilfering pills from the friends’ medicine cabinets.  I was on my way to some self-esteem.



    Ok, it needs some work–needs finishing for one thing.  It is a story I’ve told at least a hundred times.  I’ve written it in more than a few letters, but ’til now I hadn’t published it. 

  • From Beaming to SheWolf to MaryT63 and now to me, these questions came.  Introspection was needed (by me, to get my behavior into perspective).  It’s why I came to Xanga.  Maybe this will help.








    What do you most like about your body?


    It’s still alive.  I wasn’t, according to doctors, supposed to live long enough to “grow up”.  Maybe in a sense they were right, but physically-speaking, they guessed wrong.



    And least?


    Limitations due to injury and illness.



    How many fillings do you have?


    I didn’t count as they went in and some of them fell out, and I’m not going to count now.



    Do you think you’re good-looking?


    I WAS drop-dead gorgeous until I aged and let myself go.  Vestiges of the attitude remain.



    Do other people often tell you that you’re good-looking?


    not lately



    Do you look like a celebrity?


    Does Yoda count?  Okay, I don’t have the ears for it, anyway.  As a child, my mother entered me in a Shirley Temple lookalike contest, but I didn’t win.  In my twenties and thirties, with a blonde wig over my red hair, I looked like Doris Day.



    Do you wear a watch?


    no, not for years and years



    How many coats/jackets not counting blazers?


    Ignorance and apathy:  don’t know, don’t care



    Favorite pants/skirt color?:


    BLACK



    Most expensive item of clothing?


    The original price, or what I paid in the thrift shop?



    What kind of shoes do you wear?


    None at all when I can get away with it.  Outdoors in summer:  mocassins or Reeboks.  Outdoors in winter:  Sno-jogs when it’s warm, Sorel pac-boots rated to 80-below-zero, when it’s cold.  Indoors in winter, my favorites!:  grungy once-white fake-fur booties nearly to the knee, whose worn out soles I’ve replaced with camo duct tape.  Visualize yeti feet….



    Describe your style: 


    no bullshit



    Do your friends know you?


    Yes, if they’ve paid attention and believe what I tell them.



    What do they tend to be like?:


    Tolerant, or else I get under their skin too much.  Fairly honest or I don’t hang around with them.



    Are there traits in you that are universally liked?


    I don’t think so.



    How many people do you tell everything to?:


    What I know, I tell.  I publish it, and also a lot of what I imagine, suspect, wish, etc.  There are a few incriminating facts I keep to myself, but my feelings are a matter of public record.




    Favorite band ever?:


    Blind Faith, only because around the time they formed then faded I stopped choosing favorite bands.



    Most-listened-to bands:


    Whatever my kid has on the speakers when I walk in, until I get him into his headphones.  In my workroom I keep a smooth jazz station on for background noise.  The plants like it.



    Do you find any musicians good-looking?:


    Oh, yes.  I’m just old, not dead!  The young, slender Elvis, young-to-middle-age Sinatra, Willie Nelson even now, Ricky Martin…I could go on.  Why bother?



    Can you play an instrument?:


    The dancer’s instruments:  tambourine, castanets, finger cymbals; and all percussion instruments.  I got rhythm!



    Type of music most listened to:


    New Age, smooth jazz



    Type of music least listened to:


    Rap, country, Baroque.




    Do you detest religion?


    I deplore the power and manipulation of all priesthoods, any time, any brand.  The force that inspires religious thought, and the efforts various humans make at realizing it, I respect.



    How do you think this universe was formed?


    The pattern and raw materials were created and allowed to evolve into whatever it might become.




    Who do you believe is the smartest man alive at the moment?


    Tough question, since Gregory Bateson died…I’d be willing to bet that whoever it is really,  he is smart enough to be so obscure I never heard of him.



    What do you prefer, a sunny or rainy day?


    If the land needs water, I like rain.  When floods are immanent, the sun is welcome.  My favorite weather of all is a night of absolute stillness, no wind, and big fluffy snowflakes drifting down in silence.



    Do you consider yourself lucky?


    What is luck?  Something you can “encourage” with rituals or prayers…or is it just favorable happenstance?  In one sense, I’m lucky to even be alive, considering all my congenital defects and risk-taking behavior.



    Do you feel pity for those who commit suicide?:


    No, nor envy, nor blame, just the love I feel for all my fellow beings. 



    Choose one word to describe how you feel most often: 


    contented

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  • lostannie–The last time I saw my son was in the summer of 1966.  He was not yet two years old.


    cheshired–“Long strange trip” fershure!  Nobody but me knows just how strange, and I’ve forgotten a bunch of it.


    MrsBastage–Ugghhh!  You had to remind me of that masculine proclivity for ignoring email for days and days and days.


    Now for a break from this excursion into the past.  Some tubers came in the mail today, needing to be planted.  I did a walkthrough to assess winter damage in the garden and to get that little buzz of pleasure at the green things poking out of the ground.  I took pics, but it will be a few days before I upload them to my website http://cosmiverse.folksites.com/susitnart because I want a few more people to see the little gallery that’s up there now before I change it.  Putting any here would slow my load-time and that I will avoid at all costs.


    There’s nothing like garden work to bring my mind into here and now.  I’m outta here–gotta find spade, trowel, gloves….

  • Not that my recent state of mind was all that mature, but waiting to hear from my long-lost ex-husband and son has rejuvenated me. 


    Don’t get me wrong–it hasn’t put youthful spring in my step or removed any wrinkles.  I’m just impatient and insecure as the kid I used to be.


    Doesn’t this guy ever check his email??  It has been over 12 hours….


    Surely he wouldn’t just read it and blow me off???


    Maybe he got it, read it, and found enough clues to track me down and murder me for some ancient antagonism I’ve forgotten but he has not!!!!

  • If you came expecting the latest chapter of SuSu’s addictive ambivalence crisis…sorry to disappoint.


    SUBJECT SHIFT–HANG ON!


    I think (awaiting confirmation email), through the magic of the web I have just found someone I lost track of over thirty years ago.  We were married to each other then, but had been separated for a few years.  I’ll back up to when we were together…


    Sick off and on the first 20 years of my life, when I met him I was in a severe autoimmune flareup.  He was a GI, I was a car hop.  Then we married, had a baby, I entered nurse’s training and he was transferred to Japan.  I was able later to join him there, where the asthma and allergies worsened. 


    Sick first, then addicted to the pills the docs gave me, and never (I must admit) Miss Mental Health, I was a basket case.  One hot day at Travis AFB right after our flight from Japan landed, I became the victim of a catastrophic medical mistake. My mother-in-law came to the rescue and took our little boy because I could barely care for myself.  My marriage wasn’t steady then and it quickly fell apart.


    I fumbled, stumbled, worked, partied, and ended up with Hells Angels before long.   I got strung out on speed even quicker.  It made my autoimmune symptoms go away…until it wore off.  Then my inner landscape was black.  A few years along, I was in jail when a much forwarded letter reached me from him.  He said our son was fine, he was a civilian now, and the boy lived with him.


    Not a day had passed that I hadn’t missed my son.  Many times I was weepy and seriously bummed over the course my life had taken, most of the pain focused on the offspring I’d left along the way.  I gratefully answered his letter and waited for a reply.


    Then I was moved from the county jail to the state prison.  I learned that mail was not forwarded:  institutional policy.  My skin crawls as I key those words.  I tried as soon as I could to write another letter to him, but it came back marked “moved-no forwarding address.”


    That was 32 years ago.  Ever since I’ve had this machine and modem I’ve tried people finders, White Page services, every free-of-charge or dirt cheap thing I could think of to find him and our son…except a simple web search…**d’oh**  If I hadn’t been searching out ancestors that way, I wonder how long it would have taken me to get there.


    This evening I entered his full name in the Google search box, and got results.  I visited two of his websites and sent him an email.  This comes on the heels of my finding half a dozen or so cousins and some half-siblings in the last few days.  Can we say…REUNION…children? 

  • SealKitty–I know that you are right about the addictions.  Although I never got the tobacco habit or became addicted to heroin or cocaine, I’ve kicked amphetamines and barbiturates, and worked through sex addiction.  I’ve kicked the caffeine habit four or five times, stayed off alcohol for decades at a time, and I’ve even managed to stay on my highly restrictive diet for two whole months one time before yielding to cravings.


     oOMisfitOo–Do, please, let me know if you find in those dusty, cobwebbed tomes any hints to why I’m so ambivalent right now.  Meanwhile, I’m preparing to hop on the upcoming Mercury retrograde to go within and get acquainted with myself.


    On the one hand–


    I read and researched and tried things out for years, seeking the healthiest diet for me.  I learned to do kinesiology muscle testing to determine my body’s needs and detect those things it cannot tolerate. 


    The first days on that diet, I lived on that “pink cloud” of euphoria alcoholics experience at the start of recovery.  My appetite disappeared, and I was careful to eat anyway, to keep my blood sugar stable.


    Within a week, my sense of smell had come back; I could get up and walk around without becoming dizzy and falling down.  When my appetite returned during the second week, I continued to eat only approved foods in proper portions.  For once in my life, I could depend on my appetite to tell me when I was hungry.


    And on the other–


    From the day the appetite returned, the forbidden foods kept by the rest of my family tempted me.  Ads in print, TV commercials, and anything red and white even remotely resembling a Coca-Cola can, made me hang onto control with white knuckles.


    Playing Final Fantasy VIII (another addiction at the time–now I’ve moved on to X and fallen in love with Auron) a little tune accompanying the card game grew a set of lyrics.  In my mind I heard, “pizza, pizza, gotta have a pizza,” over and over.


    From about the third week, all the way to my lapse at the end of the second month, there was no euphoria for me.  Dysphoria-R-Us!  I dared not smoke any weed for fear of the munchies.  I was hateful to my family when they wanted me to cook for them the foods they love.  This is especially hard for me because a lot of the applause and approval I’ve gotten in my life has been for my excellent cooking and baking skills.  I win competitions with them. 


    The kid and the old fart were hateful to me if I offered to share my foods with them.  Bear in mind that this diet allows no sugar, honey, stevia, or artificial sweetener; no grains such as rice, wheat, corn, or oat.  No milk or cheese except that from a goat.  No red meat and only two small portions of poultry, three of fish and three eggs a week.  It’s tailored to my needs, and I have many allergies and sensitivities that limit even the varieties of fruit and vegies I can have:  no nightshade-family things, for example (tomatoes, potatoes, peppers), and no artichokes, avocadoes, oranges, apples….  This list goes on and on.


    I’ll cut to the chase:  I love food.  After I “cured” the sex addiction and became too disabled by fibromyalgia to dance, eating had become the only one of my three favorite activities left to me.  I began asking myself if life without pizza was worth living.  I still don’t have an answer to that one.