The other half of that trip to the Art Museum (A Photo Essay)

In all the non-excitement, I completely forgot about finishing up the post about the date Sweetie and I took to the Chazen Museum of Art.  I'd left off, remember, at this:

Cleverly titled "Still Life with Game, Fowl, and Vegetables." The era when artists could feel free to pain a bunch of realistic-looking dead animals has passed from the art world, and I say we are the poorer for it.  Then again, can you imagine if some 8th-grader painted that picture today?  We'd call her a plagiarist, is what. 

Here is a somewhat-blurry shot of the galleries as we walked through them:

This is a blown-glass sculpture, not far away from that mirrored glass sculpture I liked.  I think artists that work in glass are far, far more talented than other sculptors.

This is a piece I think of as the "Giant Jack."

I'm not sure what it's really called.

But it's VERY reflective:

More of the galleries.  In the first one of these photos, Sweetie had just walked around the corner, but in keeping with policy, I took a second shot that omits her.

Here's a big scary face.

(Probably not its official title.)

This piece is called "Bird."  It's from 1939, which is not a time I think of when I imagine modern-looking sculptures.

When I was a kid, I read tons and tons of comic books and science fiction and fantasy books -- probably almost literally, if you weighed them -- and drew picture after picture of people battling dragons and Vipers vs. Cylons and explosions and space shuttles and the like.  (I even once invented my own cartoon people, Snarks and Boojums.  The names I stole from Lewis Carroll).

My mom always figured that stuff would hold me back and wanted me to focus on more serious reading, lest I turn out to not be the first Doctor President Lawyer ever.

Now, I know that I could have stuck with that and had my work hanging in an art museum:

What looks like a series of spaceship drawings is actually ART! by Lee Bontecou, from 1966.  Surprise number TWO for me was that Lee Bontecou is a woman, which, okay, maybe I'm sexist but when I think of someone drawing spaceships for a living, I don't automatically think woman, and frankly, I blame society for that. \

Primarily a sculptor until she got married, Lee Bontecou began drawing and sketching once she settled down into family life.

Nowadays, Mr Bunches doesn't draw much, but he does make things out of blocks.  Yesterday, alone, he and I collaborated on a pirate ship, two laser-shooting spiders, and Mr. Fredrickson's house from Up!.  

And we carved pumpkins.  It doesn't matter how you are exercising your mind.  It matters that you are.

I'm out of time for today: Sweetie needs help getting the boys ready for school.  I'm heading up there.  More on this when I remember.

_______________________________________________________________________________

If you've got the time, check out Moon Mow Me Cheerios, my zombie-ish story that author Andrew Leon called "really good, but so so sad."  Here's an excerpt:

He comes as often as he thinks he can: a powerful feeling inside him makes him want to come here, to peer out of the bushes and creep up to the house and touch the aluminum siding and look at the patio table where the rust is painted over by…

…and to look in the windows, sure, and to hold his hand by the doorknob, wanting to test it, wanting to see if it would open, if he could pull the door open and go inside and walk upstairs on the carpet, turn the corner and see the bedroom with the Star Wars comforter…

…and to be warm, and cozy, and have a nightlight, instead of the moon, and a bookshelf instead of a tree branch and books instead of pinecones and the cat instead of sometimes a fox or porcupine stumbling across him…

Click here to go read it.

What It Is Like To Sleep Later Than You Expected But Not As Late As You Wanted

It's only 7:23 a.m. on Sunday morning, and the sun, barely up, doesn't really help the light register as a day, yet: there is light in the sky but it's not the kind of light you would call day light.

More like pre-light.

Light anticipating the real light to come later on.

Let's be honest: you wouldn't be up yet, if you could have helped not being up, but let's also be honest, you've been up more or less since 5 a.m., less sometimes than more.

Five a.m.: a terrible time to be awake if you do not want to be. Morning news shows starting, Animal Planet shows about chimpanzees and killer whales, and an ostrich? You are propped up against the pillows, waiting for sounds that will wake you back up if you can fall back asleep.

Six a.m.: Not yet light outside.  Sounds from the boys' room. Stirring.  Mr F: he wants you to lay down beside him.

"Let's put in a movie," you say. The television is playing a Baby Einstein that gives them things to say in different languages. It won't hold your attention.  He pulls you by the ear to lay down by him in his closet.  You lay down by him in his closet.

6:10 a.m.: He is back asleep.

You creep quietly out of the room. You go back to bed. Sitting upright, eyes half open, propped up on pillows, wishing that all the sleep you did not get this week would come at once.  If they -- the people that do things -- can ever think of a way to pile sleep upon sleep, to have 8 hours of sleep layered on you instead of coming in waves, sleep piled up on you like blankets when you have the chills, what a miracle!

Seven a.m.: Mr F knocks on the door. He wants to be in the bed. He wants to be on the floor. He wants you to tickle him.  He wants to swing wildly back and forth nearly hitting the chandelier, motioning you away when you try to slow him down. He wants to spin and sing and smile and spin and swing and smile.

You want coffee.

Last night, you did not set up the coffee pot with water and grounds so that this morning you could simply hit the switch and brew it. You went to bed one minute earlier because of that, and now you will have your coffee one minute later because of it, a minute here a minute there a minute everywhere.

The last of the pills for your cough: it should be done today.  They taste terrible. You eat a black jellybean to mask the flavor left in your throat.

You drink some of the coffee, finally.

It's more... better if you turn off all the lights in the house and you and Mr F sit in the light that is neither light nor gloom -- it is something in between, neither hopeful yet nor dark still.

You want toast.

Mr F is slowed down now: he is on the chair, he has the blanket wrapped around him. He sits and looks at his bare belly, wearing only a pair of gym shorts, his belly is wrinkled and he watches it move.

You watch it move.

Upstairs: voices.

This part of the morning is over.

One Lunch