Watercolor: NUI Galway Quadrangle

I added watercolor to a sketch from today. Not necessarily finished, but probably all that I'll have time for while I'm here. I didn't actually do this at twilight, but I have seen the place at twilight, and I like it better that way.

A didgeridoo! As the Galway Arts Festival kicks into gear, the buskers get more and more inventive and frenzied.

Lastly: I did not know this mammal, called a pangolin, existed. It is apparently the only mammal that has keratin scales, and it is also known as the scaly anteater.

Some Sights and Sounds from Ireland

Oh, hi. It's been a while since I've posted anything here, and I did actually have plans of regular updates. Fortunately/unfortunately, it seems I don't have time for that. But here's a few pieces of some of the more vivid experiences of my time in the city of Galway and excursions to other parts of Ireland.

A whirlwind of sound: a traditional ("trad") session in progress tonight at the Tig Coili pub, one of my favorite places in Galway. They're midway into a set of reels. Why can't St. Louis have music this good on a Monday night?

The Cliffs of Moher, on the coast of County Clare. The pathway along the cliffs is lined with large sheet rocks you might make out in the top right. My first sketch in Ireland was begun while I rested after feeling light-headed and queasy from the long and stomach-churning bus ride down from Galway. It was a gloomy day with low clouds moving in, but somehow that felt right.

A view from inside Dun Aonghasa, an Iron Age fort on the edge of a different set of spectacular cliffs (you see a number of those around here.) Dun Aonghasa is on Inis Mor, the largest of the Aran Islands, southwest of Galway. On that day we had brilliant sunshine.

The view of Dingle Harbor from our hostel. We spent a weekend on the Dingle Peninsula, which is part of County Kerry, a 5-hour bus ride south of Galway. It was an excellent weekend besides sharing a room and single bathroom with 11 other guys (way too much drunken giggling between 2 and 3 a.m. among some of the other occupants of the room.) We also had the best weather of the trip so far--resplendent sunshine but mild temperatures and a light, persistent sea-breeze.

Sketching

For a while I've been reading Travels in Siberia, Ian Frazier's 471-page Siberia-sized, immensely enjoyable record of his trips to that region. I would recommend it to anyone interested in Russia or travel writing--I now prefer him to Bill Bryson or Paul Theroux. Every now and then Frazier drops in one of his pen sketches into the text, like this one on the cover of the book: 

That one was colorized for the cover. Most are unadorned line sketches. Parts of the book were serialized in the New Yorker, whose website has an excellent slideshow of some of Frazier's best sketches. (I hope you can see that without being a subscriber.)

Upon landing on a Russian island not far from Alaska, a woman in the customs office begins to tell Frazier about the island's complicated rules for taking photographs and pulls out paperwork for him.

"I took my sketchbook from my pack and showed it to her and said I preferred to draw. At that she mentally slipped me into the harmless-nut category and sent me on my way." (165)

Another time, upon losing his notebook and sketchbook, he remarks that losing these essential journalists's tools is to him "a shooting offense, like an infantryman losing his rifle." I was inspired by Frazier's sketching habit, among many other things. It is, I think, more than an interest in anachronisms and lost causes, of a wistfulness for the past days when nearly everyone had a sketchbook and had a basic proficiency in sketching, though I certainly have no problem with that kind of nostalgia. As much as I like having pictures as a record of a trip, there is something shallow and unsatisfying about picture-taking for me, similar to clicking the "like" button for a friend's post on Facebook. When I see a landscape that impresses me, that has a strong "inscape," to use Gerard Manley Hopkin's term, pulling out my camera and clicking the button feels almost farcical to the way that the scene has made me feel, like checking a box: Been here. Was good. Perhaps photos are easier for communicating to others what I liked about the view, but for me, I didn't do the work of understanding the features of the landscape, as a sketch allows me to do.

In addition, I have a wish to someday make illustrations for a written work of mine. This desire approaches Wagner's mania for the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total work of art, in its magnitude. 

With this in mind,  I went to Shaw Nature Reserve, south and west of St. Louis in Grays Summit, with both a sketchbook and a camera. Typically at a place like that I might take 100 or more pictures. This time I decided to try Frazier-style pen sketches, only taking a few pictures. However, using pen on the first try felt too risky for me, an out-of-practice former art student, so I roughed out things with a pencil first and then cleaned and emphasized with the pen after that. 

The nature reserve, which is run by the Botanical Garden, reminded me a lot of the large estates in Russia that formerly belonged to nobles but were turned into museums and parks. Which is essentially what Shaw Nature Reserve and the Botanical Garden are: Henry Shaw, a wealthy, slave-owning St. Louis man, created the Garden from his lands in the Tower Grove neighborhood, and the nature reserve on St. Louis's outskirts includes the estate of Joseph Bascom and his large country house.

Shaw is notable for its large replicated prairie habitat, maintained by BG staff with controlled burns and reseeding with prairie plants. It is particularly impressive in late summer and fall, when the grasses are as tall as the true prairie and the wildflowers are blooming. In 2005 the park built a pioneer-style sod house on top of a hill near the prairie area.

I'm fascinated by slapdash dwellings in unlikely, unsheltered places, such as sod houses, bird nests, bird houses, badger holes, prairie dog burrows, and other such nooks. This sod house is now fully integrated into the environment, its roof sprouting tall grasses, and I saw bees, ants, and other insects coming and going from holes between the sod bricks. When I was about done working on this sketch, a mouse burst out of the bottom of the wall in front of me and scrambled around the corner. 

I was happy with what I ended up with, but I could also tell that it would take a while to be able to start right off with permanent pen like Frazier does, and an even longer time to achieve his minimalist, calligraphic strokes, charged with information, with no unnecessary details. My sketches are, well, sketchy--messy, full of squiggles trying to work out the true lines. It also took what felt like a long time, earning me a sunburn on my neck. But I felt like I had really encountered that place in a solid way. However messy, the picture belonged to me, not Fujifilm. 

I went down the hill and wanted to sketch the sod house from a distance--it looked so wayward and daring on top of the hill with massive thunderstorm clouds overhead. I tried to start with pen this time, only using pencil for the clouds, which were a jumbled, quick-moving mess.

 But after a couple sketches I was starting to recall some of my lessons from drawing and watercolor classes in high school, and this sketch of a columbine flower came off pretty quickly. 

The downside to sketching is that it is colorless. Sometimes I make notes to myself on the colors and shading in case I want to add watercolor someday, as above.

I don't know when I'll get to next, but it was a lot of fun rediscovering an interest that I haven't had time for during the school year. One of college's pressures is to specialize, to step away from hobbies and become serious at what  you're good at. I would never be a successful artist, however much I tried, but I don't think that should stop me from using sketching as a way to understand the world around me. Or making plans for an eventual Gesamtkunstwerk.

In Just-spring

A brief history of northern Missouri weather this year, for those interested.

Not so long ago, this was where we lived. Note the heavily laden trees, the nearly unrecognizable campus (this is in front of the health center, believe it or not), and the snow leopard in the bottom right.

And then we went through that long period of a few days of warm weather and then back to winter; meanwhile, the trees cautiously kept their leaves back.

 But then, very suddenly, "the world is mud-luscious" and "puddle-wonderful" (ee cummings).

Welcome to the Shire. I'm a big fan of these blue flowers at left. Also the pink ones above. A kind of cherry tree, perhaps?

(In my best David Attenborough voice) With the long-awaited departure of the migratory polar bears, the rabbit population of the southern prairie and its bordering forests at last rebounds--and bounds, and bounds.

I tend to take pictures of the same thing over and over again--you might remember seeing a similar view of the shelter in the Sunken Garden before. However, I'm not particularly apologetic about this habit--no, what I really want is a picture from the same view at the same time of day from every day of at least one year, but preferably seven.

Lately I've wondered what we are to make of transformations of this kind. As astonished as we are every time, spring happens every year. The popular short-sighted mistake is to see the turning of seasons as linear progress, conquering the preceding season--which would be about as silly as spinning around in a four-walled room and thinking that each time your sight passes a corner, the wall you're looking at is new and unique in the world. Then again, maybe not such a mistake. Doesn't each spring have a character of its own among all springs that have ever been? Do we remember enough of what is the same to really know what is different? And perhaps climate change is making our weather even more frantic and capricious, and perhaps there are more sinister implications for these seemingly more abrupt changes between the seasons. But even if it turned out to be scientifically irrelevant, I suppose I'd rather stay one of the foolish humans spinning in our enormous room of light, forgetful and amazed at the intricate green details each time around.

Eating an Apple with No Noise at All

Good news! The nice folks over at the Foliate Oak Literary Magazine published my poem in their May issue. Read it here. Check out Foliate Oak's Facebook page here.

And cue celebratory fiddle tune:

The Death of Justina (Cover)

Sometimes in a day that's going in too many directions at once, filled with a strong feeling that surges out of the shallow waters of intellect and can only find its depth in music, I want to hear a certain song. Lately it's been Jimi Hendrix's live cover of "Like a Rolling Stone." And sometimes it's enough to just imagine the music coming from me, me becoming Hendrix, calling the drummer Bob Dylan's grandmother, banging out the first chords. "Yeah hear what I say now—"

But other times that's not enough—sometimes you have to hold whatever instrument it is that you play and try to play what you want to hear. I've got a violin. Violins and guitars are different creatures, but it doesn't stop me from trying. It doesn’t matter what it might sound like to others—if I can get the barest scrape to how it’s supposed to sound, it’s usually enough.

And still other times, the music I want to hear is words. Sometimes just reading the words is enough, imagining myself reading them, the author reading them—myself as the author. 

But other times I've got to actually write the words, with my own hands hitting the chords and plucking out the riffs. Because so help me God it gets more and more preposterous, it corresponds less and less to what I remember and what I expect as if the force of life were centrifugal and threw one further and further away from one's purest memories and ambitions; and I can barely recall the old house where I was raised, where in midwinter Parma violets bloomed in a cold frame near the kitchen door, and down the long corridor, past the seven views of Rome—up two steps and down three—one entered the library, where all the books were in order and the lamps were bright. Fiction is art and art is the triumph over chaos (no less) and we can accomplish this only by the most vigilant exercise of choice, but in a world that changes more swiftly than we can perceive there is always the danger that our powers of selection will be mistaken and that the vision we serve will come to nothing.

I think that's why for so long schoolchildren were taught to get Bible verses and poems to heart, and why to John Cheever, in one story no words of his own would do, why the old durable words came through him with the irresistible force of a song we all know:

"Do, he wrote, or you'll be dead. I felt very tired. I put another piece of paper into the machine and wrote: The Lord is my shepherd, therefore can I lack nothing. He shall feed me in a green pasture and lead me forth beside the waters of comfort. He shall convert my soul and bring me forth in the paths of righteousness for his Name's sake. Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death I will fear no evil for thou art with me; thy rod and thy staff comfort me. Thou shalt prepare a table before me in the presence of them that trouble me; thou hast anointed my head with oil and my cup shall be full. Surely thy loving-kindness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life and I will dwell in the house of the Lord for ever. I gave this to Ralphie and went home."

A Word: Why Do We Call Dollars 'Dollars'?

Happy Spring! It still doesn't feel too much like spring in Kirksville, though we are seeing some early monocot flower buds push blade-like leaves through the topsoil. I've got a few essay-like ideas putting down roots right now. While these are developing secondary xylem and solidifying their grasp on the soil, here's a short linguistic-historical tale I wrote, once again for the Writing Center blog, on the creation of the word 'dollar.' It was the result of a journey through several entries in the Oxford English Dictionary, a voyage only possible with a sturdy magnifying glass.

A Word: Why Do We Call Dollars 'Dollars'?

Ah, the ubiquitous crumpled dollar—that small greenish rectangle of linen that purchases our chewing gum, under-tips the wait staff at restaurants, and refuses to be inserted into vending machines. But where does that word dollar actually come from?

Dollar, just like Dvorák, RENT, Pilsener, a lengthy pseudo-operatic rock song from the 1970s, and Ántonia Shimerda, comes to us from Bohemia, which is now part of the Czech Republic. In 1516, in the town of Jáchymov, situated near the German border and called by the nearby Germans Joachimsthal (literally “Joachim’s valley”), a new silver mine opened. Three years later, Count Hieronymus Schlick, a nobleman wishing to extend his coolness even beyond being a Bohemian count named Hieronymous Schlick, decided to start minting his own money from the silver mined in Joachimsthal, and called his large coins Joachimsthalers. (Note that in German, ‘th’ is pronounced as a hard ‘t,’ and that the ‘a’ in Joachimsthalers is pronounced like ‘a’ in English ‘what.’) As this coin gained use throughout Bohemia and Germany, burghers chose to shorten this unwieldy name to just thaler, which became the currency in many German states until German unification under Otto von Bismarck, when the Goldmark became the imperial currency. According to the Oxford English Dictionary, in the 16th century the thaler spread from High and Low German to Dutch, the language of the great sea-traders who spread their dalars all over the world, and from thence at last to England, where it was Anglicized into daler, daller, and finally dollar. Moral: next time you go to buy a bag of Cheetos from the vending machine in the laundry room, thank Count Schlick for not naming his coins Hieronyms or Schlicks.