An Inch of Rain, A Drop of Time

I heard on the local news that September '11 was the last time we've had an more than an inch of rain with one system, in this area.

Here in the swamp, we got 1.73 inches yesterday. A veritable deluge, comparatively.

It has been the same length of time since I blogged Barefoot. Much has happened since then, maybe not on the face of things, but inside of my cosmos (which is me, yours is you).

I take that back, on the face of things, too. I mean, I did, after all, quit my job a couple of weeks ago. Just up'n quit. No safety net, just my own talents. I mean, I have them (so do you), but I don't use them efficiently (neither do you, well you over in the corner, you do, but not all of you), because of trying to keep up the farce of 'employment'.

It was simply taking too much of my precious energy, without true reward. I was giving of myself, but not to myself. I see that now. I could complain about the reasons I gave my coordinator, all valid, true, but undeserving of rumination.

Instead, this little drop of time, this period of drought, has been washed cleaned and revitalized of this dry, odd, winter with a drenching of life-giving rain.

Seemed the right time to blog about the little dormant seed in my universe, which took advantage of a crack in its tough coat and decided to burst forth. I'll nurture it for all I'm worth, for it is all I have to feed myself.

protective seed coat

only holds the germ so long

it wills itself out

Her

She is waiting..somewhat impatiently.
She's been around for a while. She lives in a novel I've been slowly tapping away at.

Many overlooked her as a mere woman until she allowed a portrait to be painted.
In the portrait, she displayed her prize.

Her Prize

Detail of a painting I have been working on... For three years. I never finished it.

It's a gentle reminder that Madam is knocking on my door lately.
Darla... she says... have you forgotten? You promised to spill all the gory details. Now get to it.

Spider's Web Haiku

Rain Soaked Spider's Web

Glistening Globules Growing

Along Silken Strands

Is It Odd?

How is it that I don't believe in ghosts, yet I think my house is haunted?
How is it that I am doing things my way, yet I check if what I'm doing is okay with the inhabitants?
How is it that when I know I'm alone, I talk to the people in the house?

It's not Popeye... he's out here in the furnace house. This was where he spent most of his time... here and out on the farm, around the pond.

....Then there is the old "house in the yard" where long ago, enslaved people lived, loved and feared, and hoped, laughed and cried, worked and died. I often stand at the upstairs hall window at night and just listen... Imagine the little dark faces peering from their upstairs window at my house, and wonder what they thought.

 I love this place, I do. Over 200 years of sheltering life in this place in space.

It's not forever, of course, this I know. One day, probably sooner than later, Quarter Moon House will be gone. I don't know if mine will be the last tribe of humans to live here, but if I am...

I'm determined to absorb every bit of energy left here,

in the paint and dust and behind walls,

Recording my time as I add to it all, like a new spice in the stew.

If I'm not the last, of course I will leave it with more whispers and scents of my life.

How awesome is that?

Blackbeard Pirate Festival - Hampton VA - Day 2

By far, the Blackbeard Festival is our favorite of the annual fests around Hampton Roads. It is the only one that can get me out for at least 2 of the three days.

The scene is free, literally. No admission tickets needed, and plenty of free parking right smack dab in the middle of it all.

Loads of fest-y food and drink, and best of all, places to sit, eat, drink and be merry.

This is very attractive to my tribe. Who likes to stand and juggle a gyro and a beer? Not us.

Hampton Police force also does a fine job of being lenient, and inconspicuous. Translate that as being a very low-hassle event.

This year I went out adult-style on Friday, then took the younger of my boys on Saturday. 

The brat turned on his old mam and tried to capture her at the point of his blunderbuss... earning the ire of her dastardly dark side, conjured up and evident in her meanest pirate face.

"GGRrrrr YAR! I'll butter me homebaked bread with the marrow from yer bones, ye turncoat."

Teeth: Tools yer mama told you not to use and then uses herself to chew through the restraints, or tie on a motherly leather wristlet.

 Pirates take pictures, too.

Last year I took these shots of a van that I fell in love with, because I figured, 'that's dedication'.

Yes.. that is a ships wheel affixed to the steering wheel.

 This year I find out it belongs to The Brigands who had entertained us greatly last night, and again today (in a more intimate setting 'unplugged' style)

So... I bought a CD for a tenner from a beautiful lass, I believe was named Baby-Punch McGee which helped them gas up their brilliant land yacht to head off on more piratey adventures.

Meanwhile... at Pirate's Cove...

it was dinnertime...

The best was watching the kids swordfighting and then dancing in the round in front of the Bunch of Grapes Tavern at Pirates Cove.


Wild little heathens... it was great.

The dancing was the best, and I will tell you why...

The young lady is trying to get the kids to dance in a circle, but they won't get it together when the music starts.

It quickly progresses to a free-for-all of movement and screamy fun. I love looking at the different body gyrations they are so joyously going through.

Even the pirates had to get into it...

And yea, oh yea they lit up the bridge 'waterfall' of sparks

Yo Ho Ho.. Until next year mateys!

New Math

I was looking up pretentiousness and art and found this, and laughed and laughed, and then I painted.

http://www.morenewmath.com/

Some good stuff there at More New Math. Simple, direct, thought provoking, and funny.

Two thumbs, I have them.

Designer

Playing with Blogger's new design feature.

It should be easy, but it bogs down. Maybe it's just my laptop, but I don't think so.

Too slick = slow as syrup in January.

It must have known I was flirting with going back to WP (shh) because I was getting ready to export everything over there when I saw the new digs. It's all I really wanted anyway....
New template choices but the same easy and familiar structure.

It's kept me playing here anyway.

Dominant Allele: Wild

I wanted to take a moment to put down a little groundwork.
My parents grew up poor... My mom's parents lived in a 200 year old, two room, hand-hewn log cabin with no running water or electricity. This was in depression-era Appalachia.
Their people had already been there a while. When the brand new American government began scouting into the savage wilderness past the Eastern Piedmont, and making records of what they found, my family was already established out there, A mixture of displaced Ulster Scots living and making families with the indigenous who had been there forever.
I can finger my direct line here. Grandpa was a coal miner, he brought his family (mom was 6) down from the mountain to work industrial jobs in Norfolk, Suffolk, Cleveland. He went back after his children were raised, literally, and economically. The mountains were in his blood, he despised the city life. He wanted to move back and be where he belonged. I am lucky to have been able to be there with him and Granny often. He died when I was 26.
Granny moved down here 11 years ago. I go back to see the ones that are left. There are many relatives my age there, but I'm afraid we don't have much in common anymore. They have been mutated by Coal Industryopathy, Wal-Martiopia, Oxycontinuity, and Ritalinability. It's pitiful. sorrowful.
... And
My dad's family are from the swamp. We are connected to the family farm in Murfreesboro NC...still the same last name...we don't live there. The direct line leads to slavers granted land from King George. My dad's family line weren't the ones who inherited the farm.
Swamp dwelling, small farming. Dad grew up terribly poor, joined the army before he was legally able by lying about his age...he did it so the family had one less mouth to feed. He sent his money home. He killed so he wouldn't be killed in Vietnam.
I never knew my grandpa, he died before I was born. He was a bootlegger, painter, farmer. (my mom's side all made 'moonshine' but more for home use. Uisbaugh.) Almost the entire Vaughan clan lives hereabouts, I don't have much in common with many of them because they all chose to make 'better' choices than bootlegging and are very good and comfortable American southern baptists (many have WalMartiopia and Changeophobia)
I do have a point...
My mom and dad and their parents all went for a piece of the American dream that came pounding on their doorsteps during the age of depression and post war ApplePieNess.
They raised me and my younger brother to want to have all the trappings they were able to now buy. They had a good healthy McCarthy education, It was so much better to have a choice of shoes to wear than to be barefoot by necessity. They, too could have the comfortable homes and lives that they saw at the picture shows and later on television, Plenty of easy food... leisure time.. well mannered children.

Have you ever tried to dress a monkey?

Mom must've had it tough. Though she tried to put the frilly-bottomed tights, and patent-leather shoes and pretty bows on her fair-skinned little girl, I ran through the earth and everything in it with no regard for convention. Temper-tantrums and willfullness that would, today, have gotten me on some prescription regimine. If I couldn't have my way, there wouldn't be a way...if she locked me in my room for both of our sakes, I would turn out every drawer, relieve the bed of its sheets, mattress and box-springs, and pound the floor with my heels, then fists. I remember distinctly the day she had to physically force me on the school bus as a first grader. I braced myself, foot and hand at the bus door, while everyone watched, I hollered like a banshee. Damn it all...she got me on the bus.
Slowly I conformed enough to function.
I even started to mimick some of my peers, I learned I was supposed to pair off and make a family when I was old enough. I learned a lot of things. I tried to be what I was supposed to be.
It didn't work out so well, most of the time. I was miserable, unless I was doing what I wanted. Mom was miserable, unless I was doing what was expected. Everyone else was miserable when mom is miserable.
We fought and argued so much. Dad and bro ducked for cover.
I made bad mistakes to gain what I thought was freedom.
My wild nature makes me unsuitable for anything less than true freedom.
Some social mutation cause an allele to show up in the industrial age. Some kind of conformity gene, coding for civilization. It's phenotype glossy, and modern, alluring.
In my parents it is dominant.... but I think both are carriers of the recessive WILD gene.

oooops

I am so lucky. My phenotype is wild, uncivilized, heartpoundingly so. I have to be true to myself. I'm in the process of cracking off the burnt crust of being held too close to the bling.
They don't like it very much, but I'm only truly happy when I'm running wild and free.

I am getting closer to the jumping off place... so close.

Anyone want to jump?

Words

I was just thinking about making a tag for 'words' since I'm always searching for new ones to expand my palette for the art of writing.
I signed up for a word-a-day in my email inbox about a year ago, and thought I'd scan it for some content.
Lo! One of my favorites, and one I use as a category tag on my main blog Barefoot Heathen was the word of the day.
So it is the first tagged word on DarlaStuff. I'll make it a tag here too, because it's versatile.

Gallimaufry
PRONUNCIATION: (gal-uh-MAW-free)

Noun: A hodgepodge; a jumble.

ETYMOLOGY: From Middle French galimafree (stew), probably from galer (to make merry) + mafrer (to gorge oneself).

DarlaStuff sentence:  In that top drawer, you'll find a gallimaufry of jewelry I never wear.

Equinox

For every change, there is a season.
I have had enough of hoping for society to wake up.
Watching grass roots goodness getting chewed up in the ever-growing machine, year after year, has a way of jading a person.
It's okay. I'm getting more and more comfortable with it as time goes on.
All of those brow-beating lessons that were wrapped around me, as a cast, growing up an american girl have crumbled like the aging plaster that it is.
The destruction has taken far too long, and it is humbling.
It is exhilarating.
I had all these stickers on my car, Latitude Mary, showing my personality, choices...worldview.
Today I spent over an hour taking them all off.
Fuck it, it's just another reason for more doughy, angry, white men to shake their fist at me when they should be driving.
I'm going under. With purpose.
I've had enough of asking, of hoping for a society I was told existed.
The pressure IS building, and change will happen, just not the kind people have been programmed to expect.
The steam is rising, I'm slithering out through the pressure valve before it blows for good, and I get burned.

Simple

I do believe I like it better simple. No extras to load, and everthing easy to find.

I have spent a few days just strolling around the 'next blog' tab like I used to when I first began using blogger. Observations:

• I hate pages with lots of flashy uploads and ads I'll never click on.
• There are way too many blogs about blogging (black hole, anyone?)
• Still some WAAAAY too personal stuff being put out there.
• I don't know what to do with mine, and never have.

I'm too flighty to dedicate Barefoot Heathen to one facet of anything, so I'll just let it keep being a record of whatever the fuck I want.

Achoo!

Dusting it off and changing a few things.

Whittle away, whittle away.

Barefoot Artist

I have only begun calling myself 'an artist' rather recently. I had this silly idea that to call yourself an artist meant that you painted for a living.

I have probably made less than $100 off of art. I don't know how to sell it. I can't translate it into a price. I've been asked, "How much do you want for that?" and my answer usually is, "uh, I dunno...what do you think?"

I can calculate how much the materials cost, but I don't. I can calculate time and put a price on it, but it seems wrong. So I end up giving away many pieces as gifts along the way.

Solstice coming up, no problem...the picture you like is probably going to be along, birthday maybe.

I set up to travel with my supplies, and do go out in the field often. Sometimes just on the floor of a friends house...

I have a very modest workspace in my suite on a little butcher block table next to the window and a minifridge.

Often, a painting gets frustrated with me, and we are at odds. There is always a stack of canvases in progress, some abandoned.
Some just waiting for me to get finished with washing clothes...

Some...drawn and painted from photo shoots.

Some while I'm watching a DVD of Dave Matthews and get inspired *pause...

Some while my mind is wandering...

Some to show unforgettable moments....

Some to show forgotten spans of time...

Some to show athletic concentration...

Some to show athletic exhilaration...
Some to show encounters with nature....

And...yep...Fruit. This one is called Grapes of Wrath, and was made while I was on the phone for the last time with a woman that had called me friend and I her...She was jealous and selfish, and she was yelling at me for forty five minutes. I let her have her say, all the while silently painting...
Anyway...I love art, and I do make art works so I am an artist. I love it so much, I made another one...looks just like me...
Thank you, my friends for encouraging me, and thanks for stopping by.
Tchuss,
Darla Vaughan