Creative Cogitation

Photo of Oak Creek taken by Jake Beck­man on or about July4, 2010. Isn’t it beautiful?

I think I last blogged Day 5–6 of 100 paint­ings in 100 days.  In the­ory we are now at Day 13. So in the­ory I have had 7 more days to work and I con­fess I have not.  Sun­day started with the best of inten­sions, but I didn’t fin­ish any­thing.  Mon­day was back to work day and I car­ried out affairs of my other busi­ness.  Some­time this week DH inter­rupted me with a com­puter repair that sucked up a day & ½.  Wednes­day I did some book­keep­ing and deliv­ered it Thurs­day.  This week I also dealt with get­ting my AC fixed-so paint­ing, which I did do, was squeezed in 30-minute chunks of time wait­ing for this or that to hap­pen.  Another advan­tage of work­ing small-you can actu­ally *do* some­thing with a 30-minute chunk of time. 

Tra­di­tion­ally my friend Mayna, who retired after 20 years in the Marine Corps, and DH would join me on this 4^th of July vaca­tion break; we usu­ally stay a week or more.  Some friends and fam­ily have a dumpy trailer in Oak Creek canyon, with a lovely lit­tle deck hid­den in the trees next to the creek-when I say dumpy I mean it an affec­tion­ate way. It is bet­ter than “lit­er­ally” camp­ing out as there is a gas grill, a gas stove, restroom facil­i­ties and even a shower.  It also is stocked with things like sleep­ing bags, air mat­tresses, lights and lawn chairs.  Basi­cally you need to bring your enter­tain­ment, food, drink, cloth­ing, and shower sup­plies. There’s a coun­try store within walk­ing distance-their prices are high, but you pay for the con­ve­nience of being able to get ice in the wilder­ness. Oth­er­wise Sedona is a short drive away; it has all the usual accou­trements of a town.  

I usu­ally take a bunch of pic­tures, we build a dam to make a swim­ming hole, hike about and I really enjoy being in a place where there is no cell phone ser­vice what so ever. 

So this year Mayna is stick­ing to home as she is out of work and try­ing to con­serve funds.  DH, I dunno-we did dis­cuss com­ing up here-I cleared it with the friends and fam­ily, pur­chased sup­plies, the plan was com­ing together. Then he did the heel-dragging thing all day Fri­day rather than flat out say­ing he didn’t want to come. I ulti­mately decided I needed to get out of town, even if it was by myself, but owing to DH’s pro­cras­ti­na­tion, I showed up here some­time after 9 PM, well after sunset.  

For­tu­nately for me some of those friends were already up here; they fired up the elec­tric­ity and water for the trailer so I didn’t have to find those things in the dark. I really appre­ci­ated them doing that; they are in a dif­fer­ent trailer so they didn’t have to do that, but they did because they knew I would be com­ing. I also remem­bered to bring some pre­cooked chow so when I finally did get sit­u­ated I would have some­thing easy to make and eat. 

Last night I slept under the stars.  When the moon rose some idiot bird started singing wak­ing me up, but I drifted back to sleep until sun­rise when a squir­rel demol­ish a pine cone began throw­ing its orts at me.  The umbrella is up now so that won’t hap­pen anymore.

This is where I slept and painted. A “Deck in the Trees.”

 I did notice when I turned my lap­top detected 4 wire­less net­works includ­ing an unse­cured one. One I rec­og­nize as belong­ing to a per­son who lives up here year round.  I bet if I asked nicely he’d let me use it.  But I don’t want to.  Mostly I do come up here to “unplug” but it is get­ting harder and harder to do.  You prob­a­bly can find an unse­cure net­work on the top Machu Pichu these days.  Any­way, I am ignor­ing those net­works as if they do not exist-hey the sig­nals are “low,” they might cut out on me in the mid­dle of some­thing.   Cur­rently this blog is in a word doc­u­ment to be cut and pasted later.

I brought the com­puter up so I could work on a Spe­cial Enroll­ment Exam Class I am sup­posed to teach in August.  I am respon­si­ble for updat­ing a web­site full of mate­r­ial on all three parts and I teach the sec­tions on depre­ci­a­tion and basis.  So I turned the box on, dragged out the part one mate­ri­als, and find I have absolutely no desire to do it. Instead, I spent a leisurely morn­ing unwinding-made break­fast, drank tea and read half a book, The Tomb of Her­cules, by Andy McDer­mott, which is exactly the delight­ful escapist trash it sounds like.  Finally I am think­ing of doing some­thing con­struc­tive.  I am here in all this reek­ing fresh air and stink­ing nature com­plete with the full com­ple­ment of bugs and other wild­fire so I guess I should get my cre­ative juices flow­ing.  Instead of work­ing on the tax class website, I decided to blog.  And now to paint-maybe. 

A bit later.  I wan­dered down to the creek, Blackberry and Lumix in hand. There is this one tree creek­side which reminds me of a tree ent ala JRR Tolkien. Don’t know how I can turn that into a binary bird.  But three other images did come to me-in the morn­ing as the squir­rel was throw­ing pine cone at me, I noted an abstract pat­tern in the branches of the trees over­head.  It was almost black and white (and blurry because I was not wear­ing my glasses).  The sec­ond image came to me as I watched a sucker swim­ming in a rel­a­tively still part of the creek.  The third image came later as the shad­ows started cross­ing from the West leav­ing a shaft of light weav­ing through the thicket of trees to illu­mi­nate a sin­gle stone.  When I fin­ish them at least one will be posted here.  I don’t know what the ulti­mate ver­sion of these images will be as they are barely drafted at the moment. 

Enjoy­ing the peace of the canyon, being unplugged, and hav­ing a moment to read for the joy of reading. I wish Mayna and DH were here to enjoy it with me.  The weather is gorgeous.

Jake

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

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