WARM SOCKS AND ART PROJECTS

portraits of jenny

The cold let up a bit today, I'm grateful to say. Yesterday was cold. A sweatshirt was comfortable today, a sweater yesterday. The day before yesterday was so bitter cold I stayed in the bed as much of the day as I could, and it wasn't even warm there. My floor is the same temperature as outside, keeping the bottoms of my feet freezing. Bought two pair of super heavy duty socks purported to really keep the feet warm. They are light weight, based in a principle of some kind of fibers that hold air, keeping warm air in and cold air out. It works great on the top of my feet and ankles, but the bottoms of my feet froze the same as if I were wearing white cotton socks. As one who could never pass a semester of Physics, my conjecture is not scientific. It seems, however, that when I stand, the weight presses the fibers down flat as a piece of paper, eliminating their ability to hold heat. Could be too, poor circulation radiating little heat to retain. Today, I'm wearing some warm socks, Christmas presents from last year that are, indeed, heating my feet, even the soles. The floor is not as cold today as it was yesterday, though without these socks, I'd feel it. I've bought synthetic "fleece" socks from LLBean that were not what I'd hoped. These I bought last week are not what I'd hoped. The ones I'm wearing now are the most successful at keeping my feet warm. I'll see about finding a few more pair. Last winter and this winter I'm tired of cold feet in winter. In the past, I didn't notice it so much. I've spent a fair amount looking for truly warm socks. The ones advertised most warm have failed my feet. 

k

beautiful jen

The donkeys tore down the wall of hay I put up at the entrance to their den to deflect wind on cold nights. One or both of the donkeys pulled the tarp off that I'd wrapped around the six bales, stacked two wide, three high. The bales were knocked down. I suspect curiosity was behind it. It's hay they won't eat when I offer it to them. It looked like some of the hay was tugged at, but none eaten. The night won't be bitter cold, so I decided to wait until tomorrow when the outside air will be warmer than today, even pleasant, to reconstruct it as it was, maybe secure the tarp with a little more care. I'll let Jack watch. I'm thinking it might give him an understanding that it is hay they don't like under a tarp. I'll explain to him it's purpose, a wind-break for cold winter nights. I won't scold or make an issue of it. He may tear it apart again. If he does, I'll put it back together again. I put the tarp over the hay to protect it from wet, not to keep donkeys out of it. If they want to eat it, good. If I can get them to eat it by making a wall of it, great, I'll replace it as they eat it. It would be easy to put up a plywood wall, but I don't want to. Or I could use some old boards from the woodshed that doesn't hold wood anymore. I'll use the hay for now. They appear to like having the hay on the floor of their den. I'll use the old hay to keep their bedding fresh through the winter. I saw a forecast today that we have more bitter weather ahead. Of course. It's winter. This house holds heat like a sieve holds water. I don't want it any tighter. I don't like putting plastic on the windows because it obscures the view through the glass. Makes it look like a very dense fog is outside. I like to see out the windows. 

jenny chews carrot

Continuing to work on art projects, a little at a time. Completed #10 in the series and have numbers eleven and twelve in process toward receiving the color. This one I'm preparing now is three feet long and four inches wide, to be vertical. The cardboard is glued in place. Next is a coat of gesso. I'm wanting to paint it white, but I'm out of white. Have some ordered that will be here in a few days, but I don't want to wait. I'll paint another one white. It might be nice a brilliant cobalt blue. Maybe the white will be here for #12, which will be nice white too. Number ten is vertical, stands on a base, about a foot high and a couple inches wide. I wanted to paint it black, but  black is too dead a color unless made from red and green. Alizarin crimson and thalo green make a gorgeous black. I chose to paint it straight Payne's gray. It serves as black, though in certain lights it is not black. I think of a monolith when I see it, memories of the movie 2001: a Space Odyssey. I want to do small now. Used to want to do big. Small suits me as the most practical. Doesn't take much storage space. Small can be just as beautiful as big. I don't have room for big. I do maquettes, models for a bigger version. I believe this would be amazing about ten feet tall, made of heavy steel, or even fiberglass. The plywood and blocks of wood I'm using were all found. I continue to find rectangles of plywood around that I picked up years ago, here and there. It's become exciting going through my room of found things, looking at their potential as near future projects. Finding objects I'd forgotten about is terrific fun. I've kept these things for decades with a mind to someday-I'm-gonna. This is gonna time. 

jenny munches carrot

Closing in on my last years, it's a good time to bring to life the things I've picked up and brought home. Much paint bought over the years and not used. This is a good time to use up the paint I have. The rule of thumb I'm going by is to buy only supplies I need. Like white paint. I was all out and needed white. And gesso. Use what I have. I need to buy screws, drill bits, a few, and wood glue. Utilitarian items. Everything for the projects, I already have or find going along. Plenty of cardboard in boxes and their flaps that hang open. Already have a single-edged razor blade for easy slicing the cardboard. Sandpaper to smooth rough edges on the wood. I want it obvious that this is cardboard glued to plywood. One of the properties of oil paint I love is how it hugs its surface. As it dries, the ribs of the cardboard come through, the surface texture of the wood receives the paint. The fresh paint obscures the ribs of the cardboard, though as the paint dries and shrinks into its surface, the ribs come back. More gesso and some white on its way; it is time to start a site-specific project for my friends, the Carpenters. Their "cabin" is wood interior. On opposite walls in the living room are a pair of triangles, awkward spaces to do something with. I've found what I want to do with them. I saw in Justin's basement a piece of leftover plywood the right width, length enough to take care of both triangles. I asked if I could have it and if he would cut it to the lengths I need. Yes. I aim to bring those dead triangles to life. The project won't be done by the next time they're here. Even if I could get everything structured and painted, it takes a few weeks for the paint to dry. I'll lay on the paint, put them someplace out of reach and forget about them. The colors is the most important part now that I have the shapes I want in mind. They will be in relation to the beautiful wood around them. I don't want them to dominate the wood, but to accent the wood. These are the kinds of decisions that are fun.     

jenny

photos by tj worthington

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DONKEY DEN OPENING

jenny says come on in

donkey jen in her kitchen

donkey jack looking in 

 

 

This was another learning day. I put hay on the ground of the donkey den thinking it might make a nice place for the donkeys and calves to lie down on the cold ground. I was reminded how far equine behavior is from any animal behavior I'm acquainted with. They are fully aware. I think of Jonathan Swift's, Gulliver's Travels. I look into their eyes when I speak to them and they have shown me time after time they understood what I was saying. My relationship with them is about like it would be with two big dogs too big to let in the house. Marsha Wagoner told me in the beginning they are like dogs in many ways. I know Jack very similarly to how I know a dog. The first counsel Tom Pruitt gave me about working with animals was to talk to them. He said they like to be talked to. Jack and Jenny are settled down in their understandings of each other. They are well acquainted now. They can stand side by side with me there and not go into kicking fits. It means I can feel safe in the meadow among them. Jenny is not completely broken by Jack. My impression is that she doesn't think a great deal of this male domination activity that has forced her sumission. At the same time, she's not too annoyed. She's not in love with Jack, but he's a friendly feller. Jack is playing out his stallion role and Jenny is playing out her mare role that goes all the way back to North Africa a very long time before humans were throwing spears. Donkeys have walked with humans since the first stirrings of civilization in Africa. They like us in the same way dogs like us. It's such a natural attraction it seems genetic.



jenny in the new den

 

southern living donkey den

 

I think about questions such as how donkeys, equus africanus asinus, spread from northeastern Africa to the entire earth as a beast of burden. A month or so ago I rented a French film, Au Hazard Balthazar,  a life story of a donkey from being raised a pet by children, then sold for a beast of burden, sold again. Nobody treated the donkey right, but every once in awhile the donkey got a bit of a break. I couldn't stand it for the donkey and turned it off not far into it. I was seeing Jack mistreated in my mind's eye multiplied by all the donkeys in the world down through all history that humans have used  for nothing in return but a shelter and something to eat. And many donkeys have had a good life. They have as wide a variety of possibilities living among humans as we do living among one another. I want these donkeys during their time in my care to have happy lives, comfortable on a donkey's terms. The day's great learning was how silly it was to put a bed of hay in the den for them to lie down on. The two calves found it and started eating. They spent the night sleeping on it. All day they grazed on the hay inside the den, shitting on it, pissing on it. I had not foreseen the need for a pitchfork and took the rake to clean out the mess the calves made of all the hay. Jenny didn't want to pick up any of it. The calves had ruined it. I raked the hay out with the droppings. They put back everything they ate. I saw that keeping the dirt floor in there cleaned regularly is what I do from  here on. That's ok. I like participation with the donkeys and calves. I like the scent in there. I like barnyard scent near the house. I'd like chickens, but too many coyotes and dogs roam around here.  

 

donkey jack

 

donkey jen

 



I'm converting this little shed to a stable, a donkey den, to give the donkeys a place to get out of the weather in winter especially. I built it for a chicken house in my first summer here, 1977. Had chickens for ten years until too many dogs came in and keeping chickens became a problem. I didn't want to kill all the dogs, so eventually they killed all the chickens and I gave up chickens. In the old way they killed a dog that killed chickens, but the mountain is an exurb now and different rules apply. Tom Pruitt has been gone from the mountain several years, more than twenty, leaving me as the old man of the mountain, the keeper of the mountain. It's a role I take seriously in my heart. I was looking at the donkey den while taking pictures of it, thinking this old-time way of having a dirt-floored shed for the stock, a meadow with two donkeys and two calves, is keeping the old hillbilly style alive surrounded by subdivisions. I feel like my great grandmother whose farm was initially out in the country, a long ways from the city, surrounded by houses as far as you can drive in an hour any direction. She got her water from a hand pump in the ground behind the house. She kept a milk cow and chickens, had apple trees. From the street, her house, the original house in the area, was just another house in a continuous line of houses. The last time I saw her, she was sitting on her porch swing. I sat beside her and we talked. She was in her dementia, then senility, and took me for my uncle Sonny. I did not correct her. It didn't matter who she thought I was, she forgot a few seconds later. Grandpa gave me all kindsa hell when I told him I sat with her and let her think I was Sonny. He took it I was making fun of her when I was not. I couldn't explain it, a totally inarticulate teenage boy with red hair and freckles. I let grandpa believe what he had to believe.

 

donkey jen

 

donkey jen

 



 I suppose for the exurbanites inhabiting the mountain now, I'm the old turd of the mountain from another time, like Tom was for the generation before. I'm connected with the history of the mountain, knew people born here, who went to school in my house, who worked the fields here, who hunted in the woods and made liquor in the woods. The road once a gravel road and before that a wagon road for horses and walking. Before that, a walking and a horse trail. And before that, a hardwood forest for so many thousands of years it runs into multiple millions. I have a couple of spear points I found nearby from 4,000 to 8,000 years ago. I feel like they are my contact with the people of this mountain that go way back, with the mountain itself. In my first year, I suddenly had some chickens I did not anticipate and needed to build a shed for them over a weekend. Finished it in three days. I went to Tom Pruitt and asked him how to put up a shed. He told me about planting four posts for corners, connect them across the top and the bottom with a board, and nail vertical boards to them. He told how to frame the roof. I went home and did it. I wanted to learn the old-time ways and this project was a good beginning. Tom told me to get the used wood from an old shed we had recently dismantled. The wood of this donkey den was sawmilled on this mountain, on the Caudill farm, which my land was once a part of. I feel like the donkey den is one of the remaining living traces of the hillbilly way of life.   

 

donkey jack waits outside

 

donkey jen says see ya round

 

 

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SURREALISM IN AMERICA AND DONKEYS IN THE HAY

donkey jen

 

 

The last few weeks I've been training myself to hear the misinformation of the day, aka the news, with dispassion. I want to be able to hear American news as unengaged as if it were North Korean news. The part of the news that matters in Washington DC is of no relevance to me. I cannot be a participant in democracy because democracy is over. I enjoy listening to BBC international in the night to hear about events in the African countries. Only because Africa is the only part of the world American news never mentions, except for American military involvements in North Africa. Something the government in Sierra Leone did has the same relevance to me as the latest foothold in the American right wing's takeover of the US government. A few of the democrats are attempting to alert us to what is happening, but I'm thinking most of the democrats have their hands in the same pockets as the republicans. What's really going on is taking place on the top floors of skyscrapers and we the people are the ants crawling inline on the ground. Of course, they can't take us seriously. We, the non billionaires, are the same as ants. Step on them--so what? Scorch them with a magnifying glass--so what? Destroy their economy and take all their resources--so what? Pour gasoline down the hole and throw a match on it--so what? I do like to keep abreast of what is behind a sudden surge in yard sales, selling used clothes on facebook, daycare centers closing. Paying attention to current events I have come to see the people playing the headlines game, keeping their faces on the cover of Newsweek, are ruthless and devoid of caring. They're from the dark side. Their way of life is the dark side. By way of life, I mean consciously bleeding our economy. Why should I give them so much attention?

 

donkey jack

 

 

At Sri Aurobindo's center in Pondicherry, on the southeastern coast of India, the room where the international newspapers are read they call the Room of Lies. Gore Vidal's summation of why we have no history is it is written from diaries, journals, letters, memoirs, all of which are self serving, and newspaper articles, which we all know are inaccurate. 1-2-3-therefore: we have no history. Why do I take it as anything but what it is? The news is a corporate daily soap opera that is bigger business than tv football, basketball, baseball, the works. It's a big money tv show. Corporate news has the stamp of approval by level headed businessmen that have our best interest at heart. Like Godzilla had Tokyo's interest at heart. I haven't paid attention to tv news in so many years that when I see something inadvertently at somebody's house or in a restaurant, I'm stunned. They're not touching any subject seriously. Their haiku brevity telling it in the least words possible with a moving picture of a familiar face, an explosion, an image of military might, is impressive when I listen to the script as a concisely written brief documentary poem. Very well paid script writers work backstage. Headlines and images interspersed with commercials for tires and hyper expensive cars, razors, underarm deodorant with ingredients hardly a computer could spell, a peek-a-boo shot between a hot babe's legs on the beach at Cancun with a guy that lifts weights--they're having a rare, expensive beer. When you don't see tv for a long time, it's as hysterical as Sponge Bob Square Pants. We surely are in a time of surrealism. I think of the Hangover movies. They are Marx Brothers funny, and every bit as surrealist. 

 

donkey jen

 

 

I watch the race with my friends on Sunday, a commercial comes on, the channel is switched to a football game. A commercial comes on, we're back at the race track, or if commercials are still on the race channel, switch to another football game and watch until the next commercial, then back to the race. I have a ball. I don't know what they're watching, but I'm watching surrealism in everyday life. As I let go of the belief system that more is better, I see the surrealism that comes to us through what we call media. I cannot go there. I can, however, see some tv every once in awhile, like looking at an exhibition of surrealist paintings. It's like watching a movie of tv trends of the present. I cannot give myself over to hypnosis by the corporate media listening to them tell me over and over I'm no good unless I have fill-in-the-blank that I can't afford. I don't want it in my mind and don't want it in my consciousness. Last Sunday I chose not to go see the race because I was in a relaxed place and did not want to enter that mind of coercion to buy something I don't want. It's so bad that after a pit stop, the announcer is required to say, "he filled up with Sunoco racing fuel." Sunoco is funding the race with big money and they want the product mentioned a certain number of times per hour. I know it's all business, it's how things are done, we couldn't have the race without it. Sometimes it's over the edge. I see tv as bringing a continuously changing billboard into my home, my quiet space. I'm not filling up my space with noise about potato chips, mattresses, crappy tacos, windshield wipers, cellphones, stuff, stuff, explosions, none of it anything I want. Sunday was a day I did not want that belief system in my head, even as a folklorist observer.

 

donkey jack

 

 

I rested and worried in the bed between spells of sleep about the donkeys in the cold at night, in the cold rain. I wanted to convert small chicken shack to a shelter for the donkeys. Had to tear out a rotted floor I put in at least 25 years ago and a wall. It's not as complicated as it sounds. I borrowed a power jigsaw that cuts through nails easily. Opened the wall up, no problem. Backed the car down to the barn, tossed a heavy, tightly-packed bale of good hay in the trunk, left the lid up and drove up to a place I could throw the bale over the fence and roll it down to the donkey den. Parked the car, went back to the hay bale, cut the twine and opened the bale for the donkeys. Jenny buried her nose in it. I think she'd eaten baled hay where she lived before. She played with it, loosening it with her dexterous lips, ripping out a mouthful to chew on, chewing it like I'd made her day with a box of chocolates, and it was good hay too. I watched her taste it with her first nibbles, assessing the flavor. A smile came to her face and she picked up another swatch and started chewing. Jack acted like this might have been his first hay bale. He may have eaten from round bales before. He approached the hay with some hesitation, needing to check it out. He saw Jenny chewing on it and he pulled out some to chew. He seemed to be discovering the dried grass, unsure how he was going to like it, and it turned out he liked it. I covered the ground in the shed with hay for them to lie down on through cold winter nights and when the weather is bad. I know they like the ground, but I thought a little insulation might help keep the ground from being so cold. They might decide to eat it. They're welcome to it.  

 

donkey jen

 

 

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