I kept an image journal for a Loft class I’m taking and I’m posting the following three entrees:
I’m on a dog walk, turning the corner in the park with my two whippets leading the way, fully at the end of their extendable leashes. In general, they are back and forth, ranging the full circle of their leashed world, running, pouncing, smelling and sometimes tasting their environment. There is not much they like better than walking and winter in Minnesota is hard on them. As we round this corner the wind is suddenly in our faces. The path transitions from windswept and bare to drifted with several inches of snow. Otis shrinks into his dog coat and I see the fur on the lower portion of his back go from smooth and flat to coarse and rough. I imagine what it is like for him to walk, barefoot in the snow to his…wrists? His discomfort creates a similar automatic body response within me. Max, on the other hand goes into a violent body shake, almost throwing himself off the path, and I assume he is trying to shake off the sudden cold he feels. Now the leashes both go taunt, pointing straight ahead, and they both hunker down, pulling for home.
White Oak, Red Oak, Bur Oak. The only thing I’ve ever remembered about their difference is that the leaves on Red Oaks have a pointed tip like a feather, while the leaves of a White Oak are rounded. Also, Bur Oaks are “scruffy little trees”. As a wood, I think of oak as hardy and strong. By this time of year most trees, other than evergreens, are lifeless stick figures waiting for the world to warm. But when I see crisp, brown oak leaves clinging to tree branches in February I think they are also stubborn, much like the people that endure every winter, waiting for the weather to warm and the sap to run for yet another spring.
The seat looks soft and plush with velvet the original color of cotton candy before everything became available in rainbows. Pink, Pepto-Bismol pink if you’re too young to know the original color of cotton candy. It looks like a doll house miniature come to life. There’s no hiding its curvaceous legs, deep tufts, proud buttons and masterful workmanship. I wonder if it was always alone, embarrassed by the brightness thrust upon it? I smile, thinking of it with seven more like it grouped around a glass topped table. Everything about it looks elegantly comfortable, but sad and out of place in this Coke-a-Cola decorated bedroom.
