Cowboys, flowers, and middle age

January 22, 2009

Starting to get crazy busy. I’m at the top of the rollercoaster about to head down. I start teaching at two schools next week and am already teaching at one that started last week. And i’m writing a book. I’m scared. I’m exhilarated.

Last night after teaching and then a three hour meeting I came home, took a bath and needed to create something.

Here is one of three postcard collages I made. It’s the first time i’ve had part of an image (in this case, the man on the horse) coming off of the postcard. I kind of like it. I’m not sure what I want to do with them now. Do I add more? Do I gloss them? Do I put text on them? Do I leave them as is? I’m lately wanting to do very minimalist collages (is that an oxymoron?). And, I have to admit, these were inspired by the collages of poet John Ashbery (featured in The New York Times), which I absolutely love.

Also, what to name this set? Cowboys and Flowers? You can see all three on my Flickr page (in the right/sidebar).

And here’s a poem called “Middle-Age” by Pat Schneider, from The Writer’s Almanac (from April 2004).

Middle-Age by Pat Schneider

The child you think you don’t want

is the one who will make you laugh.

She will break your heart

when she loses the sight in one eye

and tells the doctor she wants to be

an apple tree when she grows up.

It will be this child who forgives you

again and again

for believing you don’t want her to be born, for resisting the rising tide of your body, for wishing for the red flow of her dismissal.

She will even forgive you for all the breakfasts you failed to make exceptional.

Someday this child will sit beside you.

When you are old and too tired of war

to want to watch the evening news,

she will tell you stories

like the one about her teenaged brother, your son, and his friends taking her out in a canoe when she was five years old. How they left her alone on an island in the river while they jumped off the railroad bridge.

“Middle-Age” by Pat Schneider, from Another River: New and Selected Poems. (c) Amherst Writers and Artists Press, 2005. Reprinted with permission.

** collaging and middle age? Is there a connection here? Hmmm.