Creative Cogitation

It’s been 13 days since I last blogged.  What have I done?  Not much to be per­fectly hon­est.  I went up to Oak Creek again, this time with a raft of peo­ple includ­ing 3 kids.  It was 5 days and a lot of fun (for the most part).  I did enjoy tak­ing the lit­tle ones on this or that adven­ture like hik­ing up Munds Creek or going to the deep hole; it is nice to see the unfil­tered joy of discovery.

After 3 days the enter­tain­ment com­mit­tee started to wear out though.  Kids had to redis­cover the ancient Nin­tendo in the trailer, which was rather amus­ing, the joy of the ring game (kinda like horse­shoes), Yahtzee and other such pas­times.  Most of the adults and one child left on Sun­day after­noon, as they had to work Monday.

I got some paint­ing done but I still haven’t fin­ished any of the paint­ings I dis­cussed in my last blog.  I was really hop­ing to get more done. Silly me.  Les­son learned.  If you plan a retreat that involves non artists, you are not going to get much of a chance to paint.  I am not upset really; I did need a lit­tle sum­mer retreat and tak­ing it in 2 5-day seg­ments is bet­ter than not.  On the other hand part of me is bugged because I did *waste* this time-and I know I shouldn’t be bugged.

A group of chil­dren and adults hunt for craw­dads in Oak Creek AZ. Photo by Jake Beck­man © 2010

When I arrived back in Phoenix I dis­cov­ered my air con­di­tioner had busted again.  This time the com­pres­sor shorted out. $1445 to replace it and the AC/heater we are dis­cussing is about 45 years old.  If I fix the com­pres­sor what else is going to break? It still has sev­eral other ancient parts.  In the mean time I fired up the swamp cooler, which only pro­vides a lit­tle bit of relief as its mon­soon sea­son and the humid­ity means it just does not work well. I unloaded the van and put a few things away, but some things just got put away today-that is so unlike me.  The house is a mess.  I do not want to deal with it.

I got a few bids on new heat pumps.  Holy Cow!  Need­less to say I do not have that kind of cash lying around right now.  That was last Tues­day after­noon.  I ordered a floor unit from Costco, which is sup­posed to be deliv­ered tomorrow. That post­pones the deci­sion about what to about the busted AC indefinitely, I can han­dle that, just as soon as I feel cold air wash­ing over me again. In the mean­time it has been hot and sticky and it is very hard to get moti­vated to do any­thing.  In the heat of the day I feel like tak­ing a nap directly in front of a fan.

In my *spare* time, (ha, ha, ha) I have been work­ing on the tax class website.  The web­site is 40 or cross linked/indexed pages com­plete with Q&A and sam­ple tax returns (there are probably100  pdfs attached to these pages).  The SEE study web­site is actu­ally pretty big. I am updat­ing the infor­ma­tion to cover the 2009 tax year and there are all sorts of lit­tle bits that are spe­cific only to that year that have be located and changed from the pre­vi­ous tax year. I don’t have time to do it.  I am doing this again, why?

The same group I am doing this vol­un­teer work for asked me to take over their web­site to.  I said no.  I said no.  I said no.  I think I said no on the phone for about 3o min­utes.  Finally they heard no.  As for the tax class web, I tend to be a per­son of my word so if I say I am going to do some­thing for some­one else, I gen­er­ally do it, even if I dis­cover I have bit­ten off more than I can chew.  I am not so good at hon­or­ing those promises to myself and as I sit here writ­ing this I rec­og­nize this dis­par­ity is def­i­nitely some­thing I need to address, quickly. I have got to say no a hell of a lot more often.

So the short ver­sion is I got back, melted, did my day job, shopped for AC options, met with at least 4 HVAC guys, and have been forc­ing myself to work in the *rain for­est,* which is what I am call­ing my office right now and have not really painted in about 2 weeks.  The 100 paint­ing thing has been on hia­tus for 2 weeks and it doesn’t look like I am going to have time to pick up the thread this week either.

I have to make the bleep­ing time.  More later.

Artist, AKAJake.com Come Expe­ri­ence the Art!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.

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!

The art work in this blog is fed­er­ally copy­righted. All repro­duc­tion and pub­lish­ing copy­rights are retained by the artist. Images are not to be copied, re-distributed, imi­tated, derived OR oth­er­wise used in any form with­out the explicit writ­ten per­mis­sion of the artist.