THE LAYING ON OF PAINT

.

15, 16

Today was laying on the pigment day. I wanted these four quartets to contain the same psychic energy. Thought about doing two today and two tomorrow. Passion o'ertook the application of the paint. After painting two, I was wound up and wanted to do the other two. I covered all four in paint, one after the other. It looks like there wasn't much to it, just spreading the paint with a pallet knife, yet by the time the last one was finished, I was so exhausted I needed a nap. It was the same kind of weariness as after four to six hours of writing. I nearly always go straight to bed upon finishing one of these writings. Slathering on the paint today, I was like a child at daycare playing with finger paints. A look at my hands when the laying on of paint was over suggested I had, indeed, been engaged in finger painting. I'm not somebody who can play with paint and emerge from it spotless. My hands are covered in paint, shirt and pants are spotted, hair has at least one color smeared in it, and often some on the face. I get excited and pay no attention to anything but applying paint to surface. Paint on hands and clothes I think of as collateral damage, part of it. Sometimes I'll be in town and somebody will say, "You been painting." A streak of paint will be in my hair where I scratched my head with paint on fingers. I don't care. Paint on hands and clothes is like wrinkles on the face, signatures of experience. The day was exciting. It started with painting the edge black on each of the rectangles all the way around. Glad it's a fast-drying acrylic. 

13, 14

The red one I wanted to do first, the color I puzzled over the most. I wanted an in-yer-face red, yet a deep red. Just a breath of blue changed the intensity of the red without suggesting purple. The actual red of the pigment is something like left of center in the picture above. The right side of the picture is lighter than the paint. The fresh paint becomes a mirror to the window light. I felt it when the red was right. Mixing the paint with the medium in the bowl, I was liking the red, but needed a deeper red, a red that feels earthy. A tiny touch of blue drew the intensity out of the red while leaving it the same red it was before. Like the raw red was blaring trumpets, the deepened red is a tenor sax. I wanted the red and blue to go together like my associations with art of New Mexico Indians. I did not want to make Southwestern Indian colors in these mountains. Yet a blue haunted my mind, one that is about the same intensity as turquoise, but a deeper blue without the turquoise gem suggestion. Turquoise is a beautiful blue, but I wanted crayola blue in a medium-light range. Red is a powerful color that stands on its own. I wanted a blue that would pull itself up to the intensity of the red to stand side-by-side and not recede. Blue tends to recede visually. I thought a darker blue would go way back. Looking for a lighter blue this side of pastel that would stand next to the red and not fade away. I made a little more blue than I needed by adding more, and adding more, until it felt right next to the red. The paint on this one is so thick, spreading it was like sculpting it. The blue in the photo is not true. The very far left is the closest to actual. I'd put a breath of red into the blue to, again, take the intensity out of it. The blue, like the red, has an earthen quality. It's the earthy quality in these two colors that bonds them.

14

    

Here, again, the left side is closest to the actual color. This pair, the red and blue, will be in a triangle situated above and beside stairs going up to a loft. It's in a corner behind hand railings, a psychological barrier, a fence in front of it, though the triangle is above the hand rails. A stairwell in a corner makes the space unto itself. I wanted to use colors that would honor the space, feel the space, earthen colors, albeit bright, in something of an open cave. I feel like the corner is grounded, and a passageway to the mind's playground. I felt like I wanted to make the colors suggest earth, earth and sky, while primarily playing with red and blue. The stairs lead to Lucas's loft where he writes when he retreats to "the cabin" in the Blue Ridge. The other triangle, the one on the right, is above the space where one enters the door. To the right is the kitchen. The triangle stands above the kitchen, a light space with windows and ceiling lights. I felt like the triangle above the kitchen could be about light. It's where Judy prepares the food she's good at putting together. She cleans up after herself as she goes along, so you never see a mess when Judy is in the kitchen. I just walk through the kitchen and it turns to clutter. Judy has this knack from a lifetime of practice of keeping her space organized and uncluttered. It's easy for her. She cleans up as she goes along. She has a woman come in and give the place a thorough cleaning, dead flies on the floor, before they come for a visit. This way Judy only cleans up after the immediate kitchen concerns. I wanted yellow and white, sun and cloud, egg yolk and egg white, in the right triangle above the kitchen. Maybe it will look like a sign above a Japanese restaurant in a movie. 

15, 16

The big "living room" area Judy divided into dining area with table and chairs around it on the side of the kitchen; the side with the steps to the loft is the reading area and the place for watching movies. I like the yellow and white on the kitchen side. Basic theme for the quartet was red, yellow and blue. Most often, green is used for the fourth primary color when there are only three. Why not use purple or orange? Why always green? Tradition, I suppose. I chose white for this space for its lightness, something to float above the light in the kitchen. Red or blue on the kitchen side would have been a hammer above the soft light. The red and blue belong with the stairwell, a minimalist landscape, the foot path to the mind. First thought for the opposite triangle was to make the tall one yellow and the short one white. I saw in my mind's eye the bold yellow, a color as powerful as red, would draw the energy out of the smaller white one, rendering it absent. The taller one white, the shorter yellow one enhances the white, pushes it all the more forward. The yellow can stand on its own. And the tall white one, in turn, enhances the yellow. I jump at every chance to use white and yellow together. I breathed some red into this yellow I wanted as close as I could get from memory to egg yolk yellow in fertile eggs. The four hang in another room where they will wait a few months before I touch them.  Oil paint is slow to dry, but I love the life in it when it's dry. It holds a luminous quality, to my eye. 

15, 16

*

.   

THE MOUNTAIN DOGWOOD WALKING STICK

I  had on my mind a walking stick for my friend Lucas. I'd found two oak saplings I thought would make a good walking stick. Plan was to cut them in the fall and let them dry through winter and carve them into walking sticks next the summer. However resigned I was to the wait, it stayed in my mind that I did not want to wait that long. Id just finished a walking stick for his wife, Judy, and really wanted to have one for him too by next time they came to visit in a week or two. I had a dead mountain dogwood sapling maybe ten feet from the house. It died about three years ago. I've never cut it because I had not yet seen what to do with it. It was too nice a wood to cut it for kindling. Tuesday I was thinking about Lucas's walking stick, saw the dogwood sapling: there it is. I took the long-handled clippers and cut the branches and the top off, then measured it looking for 46 inches, the length I'd made Judy's stick. It feels to me a good length for a walking stick. Fired up to get started, I turned a five-gallon bucket over outside and sat on it with pocket knife for a few hours whittling away the bark, cleaning it down to the raw wood, smoothing the knots, making it smooth from one end to the other. At the handle end, I whittled a rounded dome that fits the palm of the hand comfortably. One doesn't use the palm of the hand on end of the stick while walking, but sometimes it comes in handy to grip the end for whatever reason. I wanted it to be smooth in the hand, wanted the stick smooth to the hand the whole length, tip to tip. A good smooth piece of wood is a sensory delight to the hand. After carving it, I ran my hands all over it looking for rough spots I'd missed. Took a square of sandpaper to it, smoothing the ridges left by the knife, smoothing it to the tip. I left the knife markings on the upper foot I call the handle to designate the handle visually, to keep in its design a step in its process and maybe to give it a better grip. 

This picture shows the round dome carved for the hand and the handle section. I brought the stick in the house after sanding it, enjoying the result of the hours of sitting on the upside down bucket, which, by the way, makes a good stool. It also carries water. The stick has a couple of bends in it, good for spring. My thinking is that a perfectly straight stick, like a dowel, has no spring. A stick with spring in it doesn't jar the hand so much when it hits the ground. The vibration runs through the bones to the feet. A little bit of spring in the stick reduces the jarring factor. I just now conducted a scientific experiment. I happen to have a dowel five-eighths inch diameter, almost the same length as the walking stick. I held the dowel vertically a couple inches above a rock and dropped it to see its vibration. It bounced and vibrated like a banjo string. I did the same with the walking stick and it vibrated quite a lot more, even jumped and gave a nice ring. The lower foot of the stick's length is a good curve where much of the stick's spring is located. Up by the handle is a curve in the stick. I like about a sapling that its grain runs the length of the stick from one end to the other uninterrupted, the flow lines of its growth, of its life. I have such a respect for trees, I want the stick, the tree, to be itself with my carvings minimized to exposing the beauty in a given life form. I avoid the temptation to carve a ring around it or carve initials into it. I want my only influence to be exposing the beauty in the wood. The thing itself, a walking stick, is a creation of the human mind. I want my mind's influence be no more than that. Mind cut it to length, removed the bark and smoothed the knots branches grew from. It's smoothness to the touch from tip to tip is as far as I want to go putting mind influence into it. You might say this is a creation of my aesthetic sense. My ideal for an art creation is to make it look inevitable, like it grew that way, like it is itself without reference to my ego. I allow the stick its own shape with the least altering. It's how I am with the donkeys. I want to allow them to be themselves as much as possible without my "training" altering their minds. 

     

Here is the stick where it touches the ground. The tip is a joint a branch grew from. It makes the tip solid and I feel like the tip end will never split. The tree took up, volunteered, close to where I keep a birdfeeder. The tree does not grow to be huge. It has clusters of flowers like a Queen Anne's lace. It's a dogwood, a mountain dogwood. Another name is pagoda dogwood. I prefer mountain dogwood. We don't have many pagodas around here. The flower of the regular dogwood is four petals. The mountain dogwood is a galaxy of flying bugs when it's in flower. I have sat on steps looking at one in flower that lived here about 25 years. Walking by I saw only a few bugs with big wings. Sitting by it for an extended period of time I saw more and more bugs until I saw the air inside the tree's branches was alive with tiny flying bugs feasting on the nectar in a hundred thousand flowers. They don't make good ornamental trees. This one I watched the bugs in was a volunteer that took up soon after I moved into the house. I let it grow until it died. I was cutting dead branches off every year. I didn't care. The cats loved climbing in it, walking out on the limbs like a tightrope. I didn't think of it ornamental. It took up with me of its own and I accepted it. I liked the tree itself, and these non-decorative characteristics I saw as the life of the tree. The tree the walking stick came from lived a short time, just long enough to give me a walking stick. A giving tree. It lived its short life to be Dr Lucas Carpenter's walking stick in his retirement. He's a doctor of literature, not medicine. He's the kind of professor whose classes I would have loved in 20th Century American poetry and American lit. I'd take as many of his classes as I could. We went to school together and explored writing together, bouncing ideas off each other, reporting discoveries, inspiring each other's interest in the art of writing and reading. Reading is important to both of us. We read very differently. He reads fast; I read slow. He reads a lot of contemporary lit criticism, reading I can enjoy for a paragraph and that's enough. It's valuable to his interest, though not to mine. And what's valuable to my interest is not to his. We don't often read the same books, though we educate our own interests by way of reading. 

I like this bend in the stick that helps to designate "handle." I applied the first coat of tung oil after sanding lightly. The wood soaked the oil up so fast that the end of the stick I started at was dry to the touch by the time I'd oiled it to the other end. I pour a little oil into the palm of my hand and rub it into the wood with bare hands. A cloth soaks up too much oil to satisfy me. I want as close to all of it to go into the wood. I like oiling it by hand too. The first two coats were soaked up by the wood almost immediately. I applied the fourth coat just before sitting to this writing. The third coat took overnight to dry. This fourth coat will be dry by tomorrow. I'll let it dry a couple days before the fifth coat and a few days before the sixth, perhaps final coat. That little dogwood settled the question of how I could have a stick made for Lucas at the same time I give Judy her stick. I did not want to wait a year. Voila! The little dead dogwood I'd never cut down was just outside the door waiting to be found. I left the tree there, seeing it would make a good walking stick, but never had reason to make a walking stick and couldn't decide what length I wanted to cut it. I took my measuring tape and measured 46 inches from where I thought would make a good handle to the tip, a joint where another branch was growing. I wanted that knot on the tip end. The length was just right. I looked at it in admiration of what a good walking stick its shape will make, enough bends for spring, not so much bend to change the course of its relatively straight line. I was happy with the stick. I left the limbs on the ground. I leave the limbs that fall out of the trees on the ground where they fall. They give the birds perches and the squirrels little tunnels to run through playing chase. The ground has a slope and slides downwards over the years. The tree limbs fade into the ground giving it fiber to hold the downward erosion. It's my way of building up the topsoil. It's not much, just a matter of I want the small spot of land that is my domain to breathe with the life of the earth like in the woods. I love having tree frogs and katydids just outside the open door.  

all photos tj worthington

*

THE POPLAR WALKING STICK

judy's walking stick

This afternoon I sat on a step and whittled on a walking stick for my friend Judy. She and Lucas go walking when they're visiting, taking walking sticks found someplace. Nice sticks, old and dry. I made this stick for Judy, for her own personal walking stick that was made with her in mind. I cut the poplar sapling to length last year and let it dry after cutting off the limbs with clippers. Today was a sun shining day after a dry day following two wet days. Justin used the good weather to put a fresh coat of stain-sealer on the south side of the log house. I went to be there for company and for backup considering he was working on ladders. I sat on the step using my pocketknife, a Case XX stainless single blade with black handle. It's been my knife for over thirty-five years. It's called a "clod buster." Why? I don't know. I used to have pocket knives with two and three blades. I never used more than one. I like a knife with a single blade. I sat on the step to the deck shaving the top layer of the bark in careful slices. I wanted to leave the under layer of the bark, a light tan that would darken with oil. I whittled each place a branch came out from the trunk down to a smooth bump. Poplar wood is almost white. These places have a target in the center, the beginnings of rings, inside a white semi-circle, looking somewhat like an eye. I think of them as eyes to assist walking, watching for serpents in particular. A seeing eye walking stick. I don't like fancy walking sticks. Seems to me like a walking stick in these mountains is best like the way of life in the mountains, plain, uniquely itself. It's designs, the circles, I thought would make a good repeating pattern along the length of the stick showing the pattern of the branches growing out from the trunk. The pattern of its design is itself, its unique and solitary self.

the handle

 

I was of two minds about finishing the stick. I wanted to leave the rough marks left from slicing strips of bark onto my lap and the step between and around my feet. I wanted to sand it too, make it smooth. I liked both ways of seeing it in my mind's eye, though preferred smooth. I chose to leave the upper foot of the stick, the part the hand holds, semi-rough to let the beauty of the shaving lines have their place. Instead of being a length of it like a handle grip, I made the end of it rough and smoothed it slightly down the part I think of as the handle, fading into smooth the rest of the stick's length. It is forty-six inches, two inches shy of four feet. A walking stick really doesn't need a crook like a cane. A crook becomes an obstacle to deal with using it for a walking stick. A cane is more for keeping balance and favoring a leg. A walking stick is for moving ahead, sometimes an assist uphill or downhill when a third foot would help. The stick is smooth from one end to the other with soft bumps for the eyes, no sharp edges to snag a finger. The skin that is the under layer of the bark has intricate patterns of vertical flow lines similar to the lines on the outer bark. The lower three feet are a soft light brown and smooth as a woman's leg in panty-hose. The tung oil is bringing out the honey brown of this layer of bark I'll call the skin. The end of the stick on top is whittled into a smooth hump and sanded even smoother. Three rings for the heart of the tree and the white wood around them makes another eye, an inch in diameter. Poplar is a deceptively light weight wood. The stick has a few of my mistakes on it, places I cut too deep and exposed the white wood. No problem. It's the accidental element in the design, the human element that says a machine did not make this stick out of lumber. I want its design to be the flow lines of its life. I thought for a short time about carving a ring around it to designate handle. It was too conscious an interruption from outside the stick. I didn't want any of its design to be made by my mind. I thought about stripping a band down to the white around it in places where I slipped and exposed the white. No. Mind again. Let a few unintended nicks make their own design.

 

the human touch

 

I want the only part that is of the human mind to be the stick itself. It did not cut itself to this length or whittle itself. A walking stick is a human thing, a product of the human mind. As a walking stick, I hoped it could be its own design. A poplar is a beautiful tree. A pair of tulip poplar trees were in full flower the first time I saw this house toward making the decision to pick up and go to the mountains and start my new life working a farm in the place where all ladders start, in the foul rag and bone shop of the heart (WB Yeats). Thoreau's Walden was one of the first books I read upon moving in during winter. Thoreau was instrumental earlier in my life by way of civil disobedience learned toward dealing with the madman at home. My first lesson in the Tao; resistance by way of nonresistance. I wanted to face solitude, learn to handle it. Comfort with solitude took awhile taking root. The tulip poplar flowers struck me at the time an affirming sign. Poplar leaves turn yellow in the fall. They will be all yellow and the leaves drop, one at a time, until the tree has a sprinkling of leaves like stars, and they hold the look for quite awhile. Not far from here on the road to Whitehead, a stand of poplars on a ridge in the near distance makes a sight a photograph only diminishes in the fall when the leaves are gone and these poplars sparkle with random yellow leaves like stars. I know a place in the woods where the ground is so nearly straight up and down, rock for the ground covered with layers of decayed leaves, very difficult to walk on. Need a fifty foot rope to walk in that place. It has the biggest poplars I've seen. They're giants that grow straight up, huge trunks. In the 1920s or 30s, lumber companies came through these mountains buying all the timber, causing erosion problems that washed away sides of mountains. Evidently, they couldn't reach these trees. Yes, I'm a tree hugger. I hugged one of them, honored them for being the elders of the Air Bellows trees.

poplar bark

The woods on the mountain are all new since the mountains were stripped of their trees and the owners of the land made a little bit of money to help paying for a new house, and new fields cleared to plant oats and corn on. I think of the forest here virgin forest. The trees and growth in the woods all started growing less than a hundred years ago. Some less long ago, having been corn fields for cornbread and oats and hay for the horses. What's left of hay fields has largely gone to Christmas trees, purveyors of cancer to residents of NW North Carolina. It's ok. They pay a lot of taxes, the county budget couldn't make it without them. I was thinking today while whittling on Judy's walking stick of all the farms that were on this mountain, big farms that raised food for work horses and milk cows, chickens, family to live on through the course of a year. This is where making liquor came in. Liquor making was the only way a farmer had to make some money. It worked pretty well until it worked too well and the liquor-making corporations lobbied laws to prohibit a man from making liquor on his own land. A really good movie was made about that time not far from here around Stuart, Virginia, across the state line from Mt Airy, NC. It starred Val Kilmer and a lot of local people from the area. In scenes where a lot of men came together to stand up against the G-man, I saw local faces galore. I felt at home among them. It was especially refreshing to see mountain people portrayed accurately by way of film, even sympathetically as something besides toothless. Lawless is its title. The story was written by the son of the man the story follows, the film made from his book. The history of these hills is in Judy's walking stick that grew out of the ground of its own accord within ten feet of the house. I've put one coat of tung oil on it with bare hands. The stick soaked the oil up immediately. I'll put another coat on it later, and one a day for several days until I feel like it has done what I want it to do, preserve it as a walking stick and bring out its inner beauty, the beauty of its unique self.  

 

stick from the ground up

 

 

*

 

DONKEY JENNY MEETS A NEW FRIEND

donkey jack and donkey jenny

I took my friend Judy to meet the donkeys today. We had some carrots. The donkeys were at the other end of the meadow. Jenny was closest when they both started walking. Jenny came walking ahead, Jack about twenty feet behind her. Jenny walked especially slow, even stopped, waiting for Jack to catch up. I noticed her slow walking right away, wondered if she might be waiting to let Jack overtake her and lead the way. Jack is Alpha now. It's his role to lead the way. Jenny waited for him. He passed her starting to run and she followed close behind. I called "Donkey Jack," and Jack came in a hurry. As usual, he slowed to a stop at about fifty feet away. That's the distance where he can see clearly facial features. He looked at me, then he took off running until about ten feet from me, and slowed to a rhythmic walk with a big smile on his face. I came out of a strange car Jack had never seen and had someone with me he'd never seen. I put my hand out for him to smell, to confirm for him I am I. My other hand gave him a carrot. Jenny came up and Judy gave her some carrot. Jenny's calm today was like I'd never seen before. She was quiet, didn't even get anxious when Jack was standing beside her. I was petting Jack and talking to him while Judy was feeding carrots to Jenny. I gave carrots to Jack. He turned his rear end to Jenny and I paid close attention. He's not an aggressor from jealousy. I felt like he was telling Jenny to stay back, the ice cream man is Jack's friend. Jack stepped over to Judy and Jenny came to me. I ran my fingers inside her long ears rubbing out what I suspect are ear mites of some sort, little granules like sand. I rub them out of her ears a few times a week. She likes having her ears rubbed.

 

jenny chews a carrot

 

Jenny has never been one to want my hands on her. She'd endure me scratching her forehead and the underside of her neck, but not for long. Since she fell in love with Jack about a month ago, she sometimes likes me to touch her. Today she was wanting me to touch her like never before. In fact, she asked me to put my arms around her neck. I draped my arms over her neck, not taking hold of her, not to take charge of her, just to let her feel my arms around her neck. She loved it. I was wondering if she'd buck me with her head to cut it out. She received my hands like she never had before. Her head is heavy. When she swings it at you, the best thing to do is get out of the way. She doesn't do that to me anymore. At one point she turned her head to face me and I put a hand on either cheek, rubbing her furry cheeks. She pressed her long face to my chest and belly, I rubbed her cheeks and told her I'm happy she's my donkey friend, I love her being my friend. I tell her she's a beautiful donkey. She let me know when it was enough. Caterpillar sometimes likes to press her face into the palm of my hand and for me to hold her head like a baseball for a three to five second meditation. She goes into a deep stillness. She loves it. She lets me know when she's done by just a gesture and I let go. If I hang on any longer, it makes her nervous. It's the same with Jenny. If I'd held her to me past her will, she'd have turned anxious in a hurry. Jenny fell into my hand rubbing the underside of her neck and between the jaw bones, her ears, her cheeks. She likes me to talk into her nostrils, just long enough for her to savor the scent of my breath. We humans do all we can to wash away and mask our scents with deodorant and mouthwash. Scent is not important to us humans except when it's objectionable. We are slow to get it that scent is still important to the four-leggeds.

 

caterpillar

 

 

I'm remembering the day Jenny was coming around to trust me and I was beginning to trust her. We were about equally apprehensive of each other until our trust was established. This day I was carrying hay into the meadow for them. I'd put down the last hay, Jenny came to me like she wanted to smell me. Before this day I'd have been apprehensive she wanted to bite me, and she might have. I could see she wanted to smell me. I stopped, let my arms hang straight down, relaxed and let her have her way. She sniffed me from top of head to feet all over the front. She moved around behind me and smelled me from feet to head, taking her time. I wasn't sure about her being behind me unguarded. I was somewhat apprehensive she'd bite. She was still in her rampageous time. I decided to trust her completely, relax into it, show no lack of trust with her behind me. She meant no harm. She appreciated that I stood still and let her smell. I trusted her after this experience like never before and her trust in me rose considerably. It was a break-through moment for us. By now, I trust her behind me and she trusts me behind her. I feel as free to be relaxed behind Jenny now as Jack. I took Judy in among them with no concern for her safety. By now I know Jenny's affection for women. Sisterhood. Jenny was gentle with Judy, even with Jack standing so close they touched. Even when Jack turned his rear end to her telling her to stay back from me, Jenny acted like she didn't notice. Her attention was focused on Judy. The donkeys started moving about when they'd had enough hands-on. We took the clue and walked to the gate with donkeys all around us. I unfastened the chain  to open the gate and Jenny bumped Judy with her nose right between the legs in front. Judy jumped and Jenny laughed. I felt like Jenny was saying, Glad to meet you, sister.  

 

donkey shrooms

 

I see Jenny out the window standing next to the gate, her chin over the fence, resting on the top wire. It's a "woven-wire" fence, not barbed wire. It had some barbed wire too, but I took it off for the donkeys. They don't need barbed wire. All the other fence around the meadow is barbed wire, but this stretch of about thirty feet is barbed wire free. Jenny stands like she's having quiet time. Jack is inside their shed. He likes it in there. It's cool in the heat and he can see the entire meadow. If I were to go out there to speak to Jenny, Jack would come walking out of the shed. Jenny is enjoying the peace of Jack no being obsessed with her. It feels good to her to have a moment to herself, standing in the shade of a big maple tree. She's at home. Jenny's gentle nature is still new to me. Since she fell in love with Jack and turned Alpha over to him, she can relax into her life with her man who no longer needs to be jumping on her back so much. He chases her down only a couple times a day now. It used to be all day every day. Jack came walking up to her, she stepped aside and he rubbed the side of his face on the fencepost. Jenny walked out to the meadow to graze. Jack followed. I will take Judy into the meadow tomorrow, too. I know already Jenny will be happy to see her again. I wonder how much having Judy with me caused Jenny to give herself so fully to being touched. I'm still not quite accustomed to Jenny wanting to be touched. I have to note, too, that Jenny fell in love with me when she fell in love with Jack. It was the six months that it takes for grief to subside and at the same time get used to her new life. She has relaxed with me considerably. She has fully accepted her life with Jack to the place it's Jack she wants to be with. Jenny is apprehensive of men, which tells me I have come a very long way gaining her trust. I didn't think to take the camera, glad I didn't. It would have only been in the way. I believe a camera would have acted as a stiff-arm in so intimate a moment.  

jack and jenny

 

 

*