Instant Ramen Time Machine

Benefit Street Apartment :: Ramen Photo–Monthira Yodtiwong–iStockphoto

During the last few years of college and especially my final year, I ate a lot of instant ramen. To this day when I smell it, or see the packages stacked on store shelves, I’m transported to my apartment between the giant hedges on South Black Street, or my late-nineteenth century beat-up studio that overlooked Providence. Those two apartments and years of overlapping memories still swirl when I’m in the grocery aisle, like the past, present and future are singular.

I’d by a case worth of instant ramen at Albertsons and Star Market every few weeks. Then I road home, prepared dinner, turned on the university radio station and slurped my steaming bowl of noodles. Sometimes when it was raining or snowing and I looked out my huge windows while eating, it reminded me of that street scene from Blade Runner with Deckard at the noodle bar. After I finished, I nursed my coffee and cigarette and evaluated whatever was on the drafting table. Other nights I biked to Market House to work, or a midnight shift painting in the Bank Building. Wherever I was, they weren’t just noodles, they were a lifestyle.

I didn’t eat as much ramen after I moved to Chicago. I don’t remember what kind of food I prepared at home when I lived there, but I know I went to restaurants and had take-out a lot. Once I moved to Minneapolis I cooked for myself most of the time. Years later, after my wife and I were married, ramen found its way back into our rotation because she loves noodles too. Then our daughter was born, and she became a noodle fan as well. We ate a slightly better-quality instant ramen than when I was single, mostly because she pimped it with veges and meat, and a half-hard-boiled egg, so it was transformed into something better.

A few years ago, though, she suggested we stop eating the packaged version entirely because there were too many additives in the tasty powder. Being averse to most lifestyle changes of any kind, I was immediately concerned and voiced significant resistance to her plan. She listened to me and then gently suggested I be open. So, she began to buy bulk dry noodles and then added everything like she usually did and prepared the broth from scratch. I was spoiled. However, unless she made ramen for us, or we got ramen take-out, I didn’t make it that way just for myself because my issue was the same as it was in college. I’m impatient. I want to be eating it in five minutes and I’ll gladly sacrifice the quality to have it that fast. Food impatience might be a part of my ancestry, from when very distant relatives were starving in Scotland, or Germany, and had to eat almost anything they could find to survive that didn’t make them ill — occasional meat, grass, sticks and other unidentifiable stuff that was probably just dirt. That’s what they could find, and they needed to eat it immediately when they found it.

Then last fall, my wife moved to Florida to care for her mother. I held out for as long as I could, but at about the six-week mark, I caved, and went to our favorite Asian supermarket and bought a case of instant ramen for myself and a case for our daughter. At first, I felt disloyal and a little ashamed like I was having a ramen affair, so I kept it to myself. We talk on the phone daily though, sometimes more than once, so what she’s making for their meals on any given day is a frequent topic of conversation and what I’m eating comes up too. Eventually I couldn’t take it any longer and confessed that I was eating outlaw ramen at home again. She laughed. “That’s not all you’re eating though is it?” she asked quietly. “No, but it’s in heavy rotation.” We left it at that. What could she really say or do at that point anyway? There are over fifteen-hundred miles that separate us and I’m already blowing through my second case like an instant ramen time machine.

— — — — — — —

“We’re noodle folk. Broth runs through our veins” :: Mr. Ping, Po’s Father – Kung-Fu Panda

— — — — — — —

Songs :: Doin’ the Things That We Want To by Lou Reed, Catapult by REM, Love and Affection by Joan Armatrading, Without You by The Doobie Brothers, True to Life by Roxy Music, and Early Morning Riser by Pure Prairie League

© C. Davidson

Eye of the Tiger

Fullerton Avenue Beach

One Friday afternoon in 1986, my boss, the owner of the design studio I worked at, came to me around 4:30 and asked if I’d stay late and help him with a project. We needed to design an album cover and generate a final comp for his meeting in our office at 7:00. I agreed. Shortly after 5:00, my co-workers began to filter out for the weekend, and I walked outside with one of them to smoke a cigarette. When I returned my boss said, “Ok, here’s what I’m thinking. I have this unused color print from a photograph we shot for the (Furniture) Corporation brochure. Earlier today I had a variety of transfers made in different colors and sizes and in various typefaces, for the album title, and the bands logotype. I’d like you to do a couple of layout options while I’m getting the final photo print ready. Do whatever you think works best combining the photo and the type, and then let’s meet about 6:00 and make a final decision.” I looked at the transfers and asked, “so the band is Survivor, you mean the Eye of the Tiger band… that’s the client?” “Yeh.” “So, we’re designing an album cover for Survivor?” “Yes.” They were huge at the time, so I got nervous.

I made black and white Xerox copies of everything so I could create rough layouts while preserving the ‘final’ color components. I made two and after I finished, we looked at them, picked one, made some adjustments and then proceeded to create the final comp. We mounted it on black presentation board, looked at it for a minute, and congratulated ourselves because we’d pulled it off with time to spare.

Since there were ten minutes until the meeting, I headed back outside to have another cigarette when the studio door flew open, and Frankie Sullivan and Jim Peterik appeared. They saw my boss and walked past me towards the conference table where he sat. Both wore tight, leather pants, shirts with the top three buttons undone revealing their tan skin and chest hair, and 3/4 black boots like the early Beatles wore. They met and I went out to smoke. When I returned, I cleaned-up the mess we’d made at the opposite end of the studio from where they were meeting.

When the three of them finished they walked over to me, and my boss introduced us. Sullivan and Peterik smiled, thanked me for my help, shook my hand, and they left as suddenly as they’d arrived. My boss was smiling too because they liked the cover. Then we gathered our things and walked out together—him to the nearby parking lot to get his car and disappear into a northern burb and me to the ‘L’ station on Chicago Avenue. Meeting two pop rock stars, walking out into the humid orange dusk and summer heat, with the rumble and squeal of the trains passing overhead was surreal. Everything happened so quickly and then it was over. I found a window seat on the train, settled in, and looked east towards Lake Michigan where I’d probably spend Saturday or Sunday afternoon tanning, swimming, and eating Italian Ice on the beach with thousands of other Chicagoans.

Later that summer, my boss told me that the album cover design had been approved by the record company and there weren’t any revisions. Then months later in November, I walked into my neighborhood record store on Belmont Avenue under the tracks for my weekly visit and saw the album sitting on the ‘new releases’ shelf. I’d spent hundreds of hours, hundreds of thousands of seconds in record stores in my life and felt a lot of things, but I never felt that.

Songs :: Is This Love by Survivor, Run Through the Jungle by Creedence Clearwater Revival, She Caught the Katy by The Blues Brothers, Sunshine In Chicago by Sun Kil Moon, Someday, Someway by Marshall Crenshaw, and I Feel Alright by Steve Earle

© C. Davidson

Hi-Line Flashback [Supplemental]

Near Kremlin, Montana – Highway 2 :: 11 September 2017

Song :: In the Country by Mission Mountain Wood Band

© C. Davidson

One Way to Bring Them Back

Panasonic VR Goggles :: Original Photo-Panasonic

I have a lot of questions I wish I’d asked my folks. Sometimes I don’t remember the answers to the ones I did ask, so I’d like to revisit those, followed-up with a barrage of spin-off questions. There isn’t a comprehensive list, but there’s a growing list and as I get older, it gets longer. How did each of them cope with catastrophes, like when siblings died, and how did each family find their way through it? How did my mom manage the hardships of wheat farming in Central Montana? Did she and her siblings explore the nearby Highwood Mountains often? What were the group critiques like when my dad was in architecture school? Were there design themes that stood out? When did they both discover their passion for the arts? What courses did my mom enjoy in music school at the universities? What songs did she sing at her final recital and how many? How did they manage the lean times while parenting five kids? What time of year was it when they first met? What was the weather like? What time of day was it? Was it love at first site, or did it take time? Did they take hikes in the Bridgers? Have they reconnected with siblings on the other side — their mothers and fathers? Is there another side? Have you visited my dreams and sometimes while I’m awake? Were you there while I painted during that pre-dawn morning? It felt like you were in the room because I walked towards my computer and saw a picture of you appear as part of my screen saver loop. Were you with me while I drove east through North Dakota during a nighttime blizzard?

So, even though they’ve both passed, all of their ‘known’ history, their data, including passions, accomplishments, disappointments, and desires, can be loaded into a virtual reality program where sophisticated algorithms will process, anticipate, estimate, and fill in any data gaps, then generate an interface that will put the three of us in a space together. Something like the holodeck on Star Trek: The Next Generation. I imagine sitting with them somewhere familiar, like on their deck under the giant willow tree, the cabin porch at Seeley Lake, or the lodge in the White Mountains.

Because if their data, my data and our shared data is merged, our conversation might feel real, it might be like they’d returned. I’d be waiting with my VR Goggles on, a recorder and a legal pad for taking notes. In addition to answering my long list of questions, they could tell me how they’re doing and what it’s like where they are. Maybe then I’d never concern myself with what happens after death, because they would know, and they would tell me If it’s a space filled with light, something infinite and nest like at the same time, or confirmation that his outstretched arms actually did have hands made of roses. After our long conversation, maybe even hours, and before they left, my mom and I could hug and laugh and I could look into her eyes for as long as I wanted. I might feel my dad’s hand rest on the back of my neck, like when he felt close, or proud, or wanted to help mend a disagreement between us. I think it would feel like nothing had been lost.

Songs :: Mercy Street by Peter Gabriel, We Watch the Stars (Berlin Sessions) by Fink, Dear Mama by 2Pac, You’re Missing by Bruce Springsteen, and Wynter’s Promise by Kirk Franklin

© C. Davidson

Dreams of St. Ignatius :: [Supplemental]

Mission Mountains :: Martina Nolte – Photographer :: Creative Commons CC-by-sa-3.0de

Songs :: In The Country by Mission Mountain Wood Band

© C. Davidson

I Still Remember

Hollyhocks :: Photographer Unknown

We used to have some elderly neighbors that lived three houses south of us on the same side of the street — Susie and Lavi. They were a little shy, kept to themselves but were always very warm whenever we interacted. They’d lived in their house for many years before we moved onto the block and for many years after. Their house was a modest single story one-bedroom home painted mint green with white trim. They had a detached two car garage that was slightly bigger than their house. Their backyard was filled with a large, luscious vegetable garden, a lot of flowers and an elevated deck attached to the rear of their house where you’d often see them sitting, sunning and sipping refreshments in warm weather.

After two years of waving to each other and exchanging pleasantries, one fall day they invited me to stop by their house. “We want to show you something.” Later that afternoon I knocked on their front door and both of them greeted me. I stepped in and after we had a brief conversation, I slowly scanned their living room and my jaw dropped. It looked like a combination of a folk-art museum and a children’s playhouse. There was a shelf six feet off the floor on three sides of the room filled with beautiful cookie jars and other colorful collectibles. On the floor lining the same three walls, were large wooden doll houses — each was unique. There were at least ten or twelve of them visible. Each one had two to three floors, with highly detailed exterior treatments, like multi pane windows, shutters, window boxes with flowers, hand cut cedar roof shingles and detailed paint jobs. The interiors were completely furnished with things like lamps, chairs, tables, magazine racks complete with miniature magazines, throw rugs, bathroom fixtures, including small toothbrushes and even a mounted roll of toilet tissue. The kitchen had fixtures like countertop appliances, cups, plates, silverware, tablecloths, and house plants throughout. Everything was hand crafted in exquisite detail. The front panel of each house was removable so you could view and interact with the entire interior. They explained that they had crafted the houses from scratch over decades and had hand painted almost all of the cookie jars and other collectibles. Lavi and Susie had a secret. They were under the radar artists and artisans, and they were making magical things.

I commented on how amazing everything was and asked them a bunch of questions including why they wanted to show me all of this. Before answering Susie made me promise that I wouldn’t tell anybody what I saw besides my wife. I told her I wouldn’t. They worried about people knowing what they had in their house. Then she told me that they wanted our daughter to have one of the houses if that was OK — that she should come by with us and pick one out sometime soon. Eventually we did go to their house together and she did choose one.

Early the following spring, I saw Lavi walking from his house to his garage. I wasn’t able to get his attention that day and hadn’t seen either of them outside much which was unusual. After a couple of months, I mentioned to my wife that I hadn’t seen Susie or Lavi working in their garden. Eventually I asked our next-door neighbor about them and she said that sometime over the winter Susie was admitted to a memory care facility. Apparently, she’d been struggling and was beginning to put both of them at some risk. Lavi couldn’t manage anymore and he needed help.

Eventually Lavi and I did connect. We saw each other outside and he waved me over one cool afternoon. He told me that Susie wasn’t living with him anymore. “She’s losing her memory. She’s in a facility and it’s my fault,” he said. He began to weep and I wasn’t quite sure what to do, so I reluctantly reached out and gripped his shoulder. I didn’t know if that was going to be OK. He was a stoic Norwegian Minnesotan and sometimes his generation of men pull back and retreat during moments like this, but he didn’t, so I just kept my hand there. Susie was the love of his life and he couldn’t take care of her anymore. They each had to give-up huge parts of themselves forever. I know what grief feels like, but I don’t know what that feels like and I don’t think emotional survival is guaranteed when that kind of loss happens. Lavi lived alone in their house for only a year, or so, after Susie left. He eventually sold it and moved into a small apartment for senior residents close to where we live. Occasionally we visited him while he lived there. When he saw our daughter and one of her friends, his eyes lit up. Sometimes when the girls were occupied with whatever activity or treats Lavi provided them, he would talk about Susie and his visits with her, and how she was growing more distant every day.

As our daughter got older and grew out of the doll house, it stayed on our front porch for a while before we passed it along to a young girl on our block who our daughter babysat for. After she grew out of it, they returned it to us, and we passed it on again to some new neighbors and their daughter. I think Lavi and Susie would have been happy knowing that what they created together still has a bright life. The house they lived in has had a couple of owners since they left too and it feels very different now. If I concentrate, I can still picture them working methodically in their garden, or sunning on their deck, partially obscured by the huge hollyhocks and other large country flowers that gently swayed in the breeze between us.

For Susie and Lavi

Songs :: The Beginning of Memory by Laurie Anderson, It’s for You by Lyle Mays and Pat Metheny and Coral Room by Kate Bush

© C. Davidson

High Windy Place :: [Supplemental]

North to Minnesota – 2019

© C. Davidson

Flying Again

Gore Hill :: Photographer Unknown

White Cliffs of Dover :: Photographer Unknown

Cottonwoods :: Photographer Unknown

There was a time in my life when I flew without assistance from anything other than the wind and my gray hoodie. I unzipped it, raised it over my head and used it as a sail while hiking with a friend just below the ridge on Gore Hill. We walked through sagebrush and thick prairie grass bent by the wind. My hometown is a perpetually windy city blowing from the north and west, uninterrupted from Canada and the Rocky Mountain Front. We walked through cut banks and drop offs looking for the perfect place to leap from. We finally identified a perfect take-off. They were often just big jumps, but this time the height and distance of my leap with the strong gusty wind racing up the slope carried me weightless, and I flew. That feeling was imprinted forever.

Most of the time though, I only dreamed of flying. When I did, the dream was always the same. It began by running as fast as I could from my front yard, across the street, through the narrow side yard between my friend’s house and the house next to his, and into their backyard towards three Cottonwood trees that defined the back edge of his lawn. Right before I collided with one of them, or had to run between them, I’d get lift at the last minute and fly straight up like a jet, brushing the leaves so cotton and pollen were released into the air. After reaching the top of the sixty-foot trees, I stopped and hovered like like I was in a fight scene from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon. After floating there for a short time, gravity took over and I drifted down while trying hard to stay afloat because I didn’t want it to end.

Fifty years later I dreamed I flew again. I’d been hoping to since childhood. I even talked about it with my wife occasionally, describing the one from when I was a kid. I finally did. This time it was completely different. The location was different, I was an adult, and the complexity and risk were ramped way up. There were even people present who appeared to be there waiting for me to fly, expecting me to fly. I don’t remember everyone present, but I know my mother and my father were there. That was the first dream of any kind when they were together again since they’d both passed away. It was also the first dream I can remember that my mom was in sharp focus, rather than a hazy presence. My father had been in a couple before this, one when I even spoke with him, but having both present while I flew was unexpected.

The location looked a little like the White Cliffs of Dover especially with the similar drop off to the sea. After wandering around briefly, without interacting with anyone, and without any preparation, I ran as fast as I could to the cliffs edge and leaped. I knew it was risky because I hadn’t flown in my dreams since I was a young and I didn’t know if I could stay airborne, but it worked, and I began to soar out over the ocean, making gentle turns, and gaining elevation quickly whenever I wanted to. Then arcing gently back towards the cliff and accelerating along the edge during each fly bye. I did that a few times before I eventually didn’t turn back and continued along the ridge for a half mile or so and slowly descended to the shore far below. I found myself alone in the middle of some sort of archeological ruins mixed with more recent abandoned buildings. They were made from disintegrating field stone, concrete, and crude bricks nestled among prairie grass with cut banks like the terrain of Gore Hill. After exploring for a while and wondering why I was in this place, even questioning the dreams’ purpose, it instantly faded. Now I have a new flying dream to hold on to. It feels good to fly, it feels optimistic.

— — — — — — —

“Roaring dreams take place in a perfectly silent mind.” Jack Kerouac

— — — — — — —

Songs :: 10,000 Miles by Mary Chapin Carpenter, July by Amy Petty, Flying Cowboys by Rickie Lee Jones, Into the Mystic by Van Morrison, and Expecting to Fly by Neil Young

© C. Davidson 

Hazy American Gothic

I was on a road trip a few years ago that took me west through the entire state of Iowa where I discovered the state is divided into two horizontal stripes. The bottom half is green, and the top half is blue, with occasional dark shapes and textures interrupting the horizon like cattle, trees, and farm building silhouettes. Two-track dirt roads intersected with the narrow county highway that passed through the small town I was in. It included a two-pump gas station, unleaded and diesel, a small general store where I bought a green and yellow t-shirt that said ‘kiss a corn grower today’, a garage structure servicing large trucks and farm machinery, a huge pile of irrigation equipment that was disappearing into tall grass, and a blacksmith shop. I could hear a sledgehammer banging iron and saw an orange glow with occasional sparks flying out of the door. Much of the ground surrounding these places was packed dirt, stained with oil, gasoline, and other industrial fluids.

After refueling, I took one of the two-track roads out into a field with all my windows open. I stopped, got out and was surrounded by late summer corn way over my head. It was unsettling, like when I get lost in a maze and think I’ll never find my way out, or when I can’t immediately locate the car in a multilevel parking ramp because I forgot where I parked. I imagined Iris Dement singing Our Town, or Leaning on the Everlasting Arm because the melancholy was thick. I thought about home and my family, but they were very far away, so I got back in the car and drove away from the discomfort, but couldn’t because then I thought about the painting American Gothic.

My knowledge of Grant Wood’s painting American Gothic has been incorrect from the start. I never bothered to learn the full story behind the painting. My American Art history professor must have spoken about it, but I don’t remember what he said, and I’ve made huge assumptions about what I thought the painting depicted. I assumed Wood somehow discovered this married couple on their farm one day while out exploring and asked them if he could sketch them. They agreed to pose for him, but he’d have to come back later. So, he showed up to sketch them at the specified time but had to wait. He sat on their front porch until they were finished with their afternoon bible study at the kitchen table. It was hot, humid, and quiet except for the cicadas and the mumbling he could hear through the screen door.

None of that happened though. It isn’t a portrait of a husband and wife at all, it depicts a father and daughter. Wood came across this house randomly with a fellow artist and felt moved to draw it. Then later asked his family dentist and his sister to pose for him. They weren’t even in the same room. They were sketched separately. That’s how he constructed his painting. He wasn't documenting an existing situation. He assembled separate elements and combined them to form this open-ended story about fictional people in Iowa.

Regardless of Grant Woods intent, or my assumptions, the painting makes me uncomfortable. Maybe it’s because the pitchfork automatically implies poking, or stabbing. It makes me think of ‘children of the corn’ too and they look like they could be involved somehow, controlling the children without words, just coded eye movements—sending out the herd to track down trespassers that stray into their fields. Someone might have pulled over, gotten out to stretch their legs and entered the rows of corn to find shade and pee one hot afternoon. They thought they were far enough away from the farmhouse that they wouldn’t be noticed, but they miscalculated how easy it is to see movement in the distance on most Iowa farms. The children were summoned and congregated quickly and rushed from the barn into the fields almost like a single organism. Locating the unaware intruder without even making their presence known, then stopped abruptly like a roadrunner. They quietly encircled their prey and emerged from the corn in slow motion, blinking simultaneously and silent.

Songs :: Our Town and Leaning on the Everlasting Arm by Iris DeMent, and Revelator by Gillian Welch

© C. Davidson

Tomah(awk)

Tomah Train Station :: Photographer Unknown

When the train approached the station thirty-seven years ago I was excited. I was excited at most of the stops we made crossing the country because I’d never been to any of those places, or even east of Culbertson, Montana. We were in Wisconsin and I missed the conductor’s announcement about the stop, but I saw the station sign next to the tracks a quarter mile out and it said Tomah. I thought the sign was wrong even though it was blurry through part of a moving train window. I assumed it was supposed to read Tomahawk, with the ‘awk’ letters missing. My grandmother, Florence Scott, grew up in Tomahawk, Wisconsin, and I wanted it to be Tomahawk. Tomahawk does exist in a different part of the state, but I didn’t know that then. I even started an ink drawing about it the next day titled Tomah while we where in Ohio en route to Rhode Island. Eight years later I drove by the Interstate 94 exit sign to Tomah on my way to Chicago from Minneapolis. I’d been mistaken for years. If laptops, Wi-Fi and Google had existed while I was on the train in 1983, I might have discovered my assumption was wrong, but that technology didn’t exist.

Whenever I imagine her hometown and her childhood with her sisters Georgia and Belle, it’s mostly fiction. I don’t remember most of her history there, but I know what Wisconsin feels like because we live near it and spend time there. I know what a small town with a lake nearby feels like too because I’ve lived in similar towns and watched TV shows like The Walton’s and especially the opening to the Andy Griffith Show when I was a kid. Maybe she had experiences like that. My parents told me that she was strong, direct, and didn’t suffer fools. I remember her hospitality and grace, like when she made me poached eggs for breakfast, how she managed family during holiday dinners and Easter egg hunts, and when my cousin and I picked apples from her tree on Saturday. I remember other moments too, but not how my grandmother felt, or how her childhood and teen years shaped her because I never asked.

She visited me in a dream when I was an adult many decades after she died. She wore a distinctive blue and white floral-patterned dress that I remembered from my childhood. When I told my mom about the dream, she remembered that dress too. My grandmother and I were in a small dimly lit room with the warm light from a window illuminating dust particles in the air. We looked at each other and after a minute, she walked over and gently touched my arm. I still feel her hand and and remember how the hazy light warmed and brightened slightly when she told me “everything is going to be alright.”

Songs :: Tell Me All the Things You Do and The Way I Feel by Fleetwood Mac, White Lily by Laurie Anderson and Here by David Byrne

© C. Davidson

Conversion

Recycleables

Debris

Relief

Hope

Twenty-five years after moving in, I’m moving out — in the middle of a summer blast furnace, the virus, endless police brutality and lynching’s right before our very eyes in broad daylight. It feels like the right time, a long overdue time. Shedding old things and old stories, trying to pay attention to new things and new stories out of necessity, and out of my own ignorant complicity. It’s unsettling, unnerving and devastating.

I’ve been pondering this move for years, but always found reasons not to, like I don’t have the time, or I have too many unfinished projects, or where am I going to find something else this affordable? Sometimes when I postpone taking action and avoid making overdue decisions, they’re made for me, whether I’m ready or not. Change and transitions are always a challenge. I know lots of people who embrace both of those things and flourish — who don’t hesitate to move from one home to another home, or even from one state to another state every few years — significant ‘into the unknown’ moves — and even career changes every couple of years, for years on end. It’s almost unfathomable. My daughter is the opposite of me in this regard too — even though she appreciates the nest, she’s mostly a mover and an adapter, she’s a nomad. I feel like a different species sometimes. In my work, I’m willing to be uncomfortable in uncharted territory, but with my home, my family and my lifestyle, I’m not as willing. I want a solid anchor to a place and my patterns, like this work space has been for decades.

My crap is an overwhelming avalanche — mountains of paper, job files, specs, paper, estimates, correspondence, typical design debris, drawers full of press sheets from 1995 through 2019, paper samples two decades old, cables and hard drives, art supplies like paint, brushes, and fluids, raw canvas, paper, stretchers, computers, scanners, books, paper, project samples, office supplies, postcards I never sent, memos I never sent, copies of letters I wish I hadn’t sent, old resentments triggered by long lost meeting notes from deranged editors, copies of first emails that turned into lifelong friendships, paper, an old bag of holiday nuts, mops, cleaning supplies, in-process paintings and drawings, book research, bundles of wheat, hardware, software, manuals, tools, paper, furniture and dust. I’ve rented this space longer than I lived in my parents’ home growing-up — longer than my daughter is old. It holds lots of good memories, hard memories, and some dark hazy years. Sifting through physical and emotional debris to determine what’s saved, what’s shredded, what’s recycled, and what I want to cradle in my hands again like a timeless relic, and then reminisce about it quietly and endlessly in the weeks and months ahead feels impossible—like a collection of handmade cards and affirming notes my wife made for me. Sometimes I find another drawing by my daughter or an illustrated letter from when she was four years old, asking me to come home so we can be together as a family, including our cat, as soon as possible. Sometimes I couldn’t come home because of a project deadline, or feeling lost and angry.

Almost ever pile needs to be touched and patiently reviewed. Occasionally I can grab an entire box of something, like book manuscripts from decades ago, or ancient financial records and toss them without review, but that’s the exception. If shoveling it all out into a pile was an option, or setting it all on fire without thinking was possible, it would be much easier. If I don’t sift everything, I’ll miss the sweet nuggets that make it rewarding, that provide inspiration and hope like a treasure hunt. So I wade through it for weeks and when I eventually look-up from what I’m sorting through in my lap, through my scowl and see what’s left, I want to give-up and call building management and tell them I need another month, I’ll pay, but tell the new tenant I just can’t finish on time. Maybe I’ll call our family doctor for a psychotherapist referral after this is over, someone who can provide a deal on a bundle of appointments because I have a lot to unpack.

— — — — — — —

“The best way out is always through.” Robert Frost

— — — — — — —

“If you get rid of the demons and the other disturbing things, if you get rid of them, then the angels fly off too.” Joni Mitchell

— — — — — — —

© C. Davidson

Songs :: The Perfect Boy by The Cure, Side Tracked by Dave Mason, and Proudest Monkey by Dave Matthews Band

 

Four Owls

Gibson Flats

Minneapolis :: A couple of months ago my wife heard an owl while she walked our dog near the Mississippi River. When they got home, she was excited and hoped next time she might even see it. More recently we walked him together and ended up in the same area. Just as I was telling her that it would have been my mother’s birthday, she touched my shoulder and suddenly an owl burst out of the trees from the river bluffs. A crow and a falcon dive bombed it and the three of them wrestled mid-flight directly overhead and landed forty feet up a pine tree close to where we were stood. After ten minutes hassling the owl, the crow and falcon gave up, flew out of the tree, picked on each other briefly and disappeared north into the river gorge. The owl perched silently until my wife began to hoot.

Great Falls :: The following fall I was in my hometown for a few days. The day before I returned to Minnesota, I drove to Highland Cemetery on the edge of town to visit the family plot. Whenever I visit the cemetery, I always pay my respects to Charlie Russell’s grave too which is nearby. As I walked, I heard a noise in the distance which slowly grew closer, louder and ended high in an enormous pine tree not far from where I stood. I assumed it was a bird, but it was oddly loud which made it alarming. Any noise in a cemetery, as slight as it may be, is unsettling. It might be a ghost, or a corpse clawing its way out of the ground then levitating towards me like a vampire.

I stared into the trees where the sound ended. If I hadn’t heard it and searched for the location of the noise, I never would have seen it. It was hard to tell what kind of bird it was because it blended in with the enormous pine trees. I grabbed my phone and zoomed in on it with the camera. It was still murky and hard to distinguish, but once its’ head rotated in that distinct way, I realized it was an owl. We stared at each other for ten minutes before it flew south towards the mountains.

Dutton :: The next day I ate breakfast with my sister, packed my gear, and began the long drive home. I looked forward to this leg of the trip because I planned to take Interstate 15 North to Dutton and then east along the hi-line. I hadn’t driven this route in decades. I was anxious to stop in Dutton because my dad’s firm designed a church there in the 1960’s. I’d only seen photos of it and read articles about it. It had won numerous AIA awards, and I’d admired it since I was in grade school. The shape of the building felt a bit radical for this small farm community located in the middle of the wheat country. While the design was contemporary and forward looking, it also reflected the vernacular of barns and other agricultural buildings.

I leaned against the car in front of the church, with the doors and rear hatch wide open and ate a snack. After a while I noticed a dark shape underneath the shaded eave high up on the eastern wall. It looked like something was on the downspout. I walked closer and saw the head of an owl rotate towards me. It was big. I looked closer and noticed a second owl on the other gutter downspout. I couldn’t believe I was seeing two more owls in less than twenty-four hours for a total of three.

All these sightings felt specific and personal, like messengers from the other side during challenging times—breaking through and keeping watch. When I googled owl symbolism, the information was a little dark. Most of it focused on death, but I read further, and it explained that death means more than ‘the end’, it also means transition and change—from one thing to another thing, maybe even from one time and space to another time and space. They’re often invisible but lately I’d seen and heard them arrive.

Songs :: More Than This by Roxy Music, Journey Through The Past by Neil Young, and Don’t Give Up by Peter Gabriel

© C. Davidson

Escape Hatch

Minnehaha Creek

Who knew that in March 2020, I’d have a self-refreshing browser window open and docked twenty-four hours a day, with seven online store tabs all spring loaded with alerts, dings, prompts and hand signals telling me that our favorite brands of toilet paper, disinfectant wipes, disinfectant cleaners, hand sanitizer and rubbing alcohol might be available for order and delivery. There haven’t been any dings, or hand signals. Everything I look for online is out of stock and its whereabouts is unknown. No one’s even sure if these products are made anymore. I’m not completely certain what day it is.

We usually make a once a week journey, maybe twice, to a grocery store, a big-box store, a hardware store, or a farmer’s market, to get the things we need to keep things going; milk, eggs, rice, flour, meat, vegetables, ginger ale, mouse traps, and zen party mix. My goal is to get what I need and escape as stealthily as possible to avoid any potential stampeding, or trampling. No matter where and what we’re shopping for, we always check the paper products aisle, the cleaners and personal care aisles to make absolutely sure that the shelves are still empty, like during the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.

A few Saturday’s ago, my morning started out just fine and by early afternoon I’d morphed into a tightly wound stressed ball of stress; worn down by virus concerns, the never-ending, dangerous, orange clown stick show, more horrific police brutality and white-supremacy crimes, and a simmering fear about our daughter who’s sheltered with six college roommates in Brooklyn — the center of the biggest pandemic crisis in the country. It was scaring me and it came out sideways. I wasn’t doing fine. I was melting down and I started to project all of it on to my wife.

So, I took our dog for a long walk into the Minnehaha Creek gorge located below Minnehaha Falls not far from our house. It’s heavily wooded, has dense ground cover in some areas, meandering trails and a park service road on one side. I mistakenly walked the service road for too long and was shocked at the amount of people I encountered, without masks. I understood that it was a beautiful day and we’d all been sheltering for over two weeks, but I was spoiled. My wife and I had continued to recreate a few times a week since the whole thing began, and it had been mostly empty in the parks, but not that Saturday. So, I crossed the creek on one of the beautiful WPA built stone bridges, and onto a closed trail that hugged the steep bluffs on the opposite side. It was closed because there was significant winter erosion and parts of the trail had slid into the creek — even on that trail there were people. Even with soft filtered light, a deep blue sky and the soothing sound of the creek rapids, I wasn’t calmed. I still felt vulnerable, claustrophobic and annoyed.

After fifteen minutes, I sat down on a tree stump and considered the options. We could turn around and quickly leave the way we came in, back through people and go somewhere less busy; pull up my mask and continue, through even more people, to the river; or find a different way out, with no people. Our dog was fine, but I had to escape. I looked up and scanned the bluffs for a simple route. Eventually, I found a path I thought would work and we started to climb. I kept him on a short lead just in case something happened, slid or gave way. We did kick some rocks and debris loose and I noticed that there were downed trees shifting in the soft ground around us. We climbed quickly like we were being chased and exited out of the top of the gorge and into a different part of the park, into the sun, without people.

— — — — — — —

“Any more of this and the hull will start to buckle!” :: Starbuck – Battle Star Galactica

— — — — — — —

Song :: Another Day in America by Laurie Anderson

© C. Davidson

Hammer Time

Hammer :: Oil and Latex on Canvas :: 48” x 48” :: 1981

Once I drove from Minneapolis to Bend in a cargo van loaded with artwork because everything was going to be installed in a show. I had four boxes of framed ink drawings, three five-foot square wrapped canvases, and a couple of smaller paintings. The three larger canvases could only fit diagonally in the space, so it looked a little inefficient, but they fit, with room for a couple of smaller paintings, some miscellaneous tools and traveling gear tucked into the leftover spaces. On my drive west, I stopped at my parents’ house in Montana and stayed overnight to pick-up Hammer, a four-foot square painting which we also planned to hang if the space could accommodate it.

After I painted it in college and before I moved from Montana a few years later, I stored It in my parents’ basement along with other artwork and boxes of stuff. During art school, Hammer always sat off to the side somewhere. It always seemed to be a bit of an outlier for some reason. Not that my other work was cohesive, but this one seemed even more different. I can’t explain why. It just felt different. I was attached to it though so whatever it was, I knew it was something I needed to pay attention to.

After my initial show, the gallery stored my work for six months and included a piece or two in subsequent group shows that they mounted. During one of the shows, Hammer was purchased by a man named John. I never met him, and I wasn’t involved in the transaction in any way, but I did cash his check, so I know that it happened. I got his contact information from my freinds, the gallery owners, and eventually wrote to him. He lived in Portland. I thanked him and let him know how happy I was that he purchased it and gave it new life. I didn’t receive a response, so I still don’t really know its fate, or John’s status, but I hope they’re fine.

Songs :: Moods for Moderns by Elvis Costello, Once Upon a Time In the West by Dire Straits, and Two Soldiers by David Byrne

© C. Davidson

Everything

scurrying through leaves

Download

Pablo draws a bull in mid-air with a flashlight like he’s a matador. I only knew a little about him and his work as a painter and a sculptor before I went to college. I was aware of his most famous pieces, like Guernica and The Old Guitarist. Then I took art history courses which provided context and dug much deeper into his work and the time frame he was working in. I came across this photo around that same time.

When I saw it my view of him changed completely and my view of art changed even more. That discovery, along with other stuff I was exposed to, studying, trying, and connecting to, pushed me to trust my own instincts in my work. I was painting, photographing, drawing, dabbling in video and performance art, and was introduced to modern and postmodern typography and graphic design. Everything was blown wide open and happening at once.

Then one night, I was sitting on the back doorstep of my friend’s house on Montana Avenue smoking cigarettes. It was clear, moonless, and music filled the house for hours and drifted into the air outside where I was fueled by mushrooms and beer. Everything was tingling, electric, connected, and I felt immersed in all of it. I could hear night critters foraging through the leaves and nearby winter hedge. Frequent falling stars and slow-moving satellites passed overhead. All the signals and all of the positive voices began to merge. Everything was vibrating and now even magic was a factor.

For Pablo

Songs :: Good Times Roll by The Cars, Wild West End by Dire Straits, Peace of Mind and Ride My Llama by Neil Young, and Have You Seen the Stars Tonite by Jefferson Starship and Paul Kanter

© C. Davidson

"That Dog Floats" :: [Supplemental]

Chaz Scouting Near the Mississippi River

Full Blast Near Rice Creek

Airborne Outside Our Honeycomb Hideout

© C. Davidson

Pursuit of Happiness :: [Supplemental]

Songs :: Indian Summer by Poco, Fight the Power by Public Enemy, and Southern Cross by The Ozark Mountain Daredevils

© C. Davidson

I Almost Had a Nervous Breakdown

A Selection of the Correct Gouache Containers from 1984

When I was in grad school, most of my time was consumed with course work, thesis work, grocery shopping at Star Market, laundry on Capitol Hill, and sleeping. The undergraduate curriculum was extensive and the first course I took was a winter session color theory class. Our first assignment was to create a primary and secondary color wheel by hand painting individual colors on paper and then assembling them. The next couple of assignments isolated specific colors, like compliments, and presented them as pairings to demonstrate various color relationships like simultaneous contrast and other phenomena.

For our final project, we picked an object to translate in color and in black and white. Unlike the previous assignments, it didn’t require painting on separate pieces paper, cutting the swatches out, and then dry mounting them. We painted directly onto a single surface. I picked a conk shell. The professor asked if I was sure I wanted to work with this object because of its complexity. I assured her it would be fine. I broke it down into approximately 22 colors for the color version and another 20 or so for the black and white version. There are very few distinct color breaks because it’s just a smear of color from one to another. I started by creating two identical line drawings of the shell within a 10 x 10 square format in pencil. Once I determined the composition, I began to mix paint.

I used small, shallow, aluminum pans about the size and depth of a hockey puck to hold each color. After I finished, I covered each container in cellophane. I don’t remember exactly what happened immediately after that, why I left, or where I went, but it must have been gone for many days. When I returned, I peeled off the cellophane and discovered that most of the colors were partially dry and unusable. I almost had a nervous breakdown. I had to start completely over with the exception of a few that survived. When I spoke with the professor to let her know what had happened and how I was now way behind schedule, she listened, nodded and gently let me know that a different type of container would have been a better way to go—like the ones she recommended on the supplies list. I bought them and started over. I remixed all of the colors and gray values, began painting and eventually ran out of time. I didn’t finish either piece completely and she had to evaluate them on what I had. It was a disaster. Thirty-five years later I still have ‘school dreams’ that reference those five weeks, reliving the horror of dry cracked gouache pucks.

Songs :: Take Five by The Dave Brubeck Quartet, She’s Gone by Hall & Oates, and Once In a Lifetime by Talking Heads

For Aki

© C. Davidson

Stretchers or Strainers

About ten years ago a friend told me during a phone conversation that I was using the term ‘stretcher’ incorrectly. We were talking about painting and I mentioned I was excited because I had four newly built stretchers — a stretcher being the wooden frame that canvas, or linen, or whatever, is stretched over. He said, “the proper term for what you built is a ‘strainer’. Technically stretchers have expandable corner joints and strainers corners are fixed.” Adjustable corners allow for the expansion and contraction of the canvas and the wood in humid, or less humid, environments. Sometimes hardware is built into each corner of the frame and at other times thin wood shims are inserted into the mitered corner joints to expand the frame. Regardless of the technique, they’re like unicorns because I’ve had a number of painting professors in my life and none of them ever used the word strainer. They all called them stretchers, even if what we built were technically strainers. I googled the term recently too and read a number of different articles about them — it all seemed a little hazy to me. Plus the word strainer is confusing anyway—strain what? So the take away for me is that even though there’s a difference, most people say stretchers, including most painters when referring to both types of frames. However, I did see an actual ‘stretcher’ in an art supply store once, on display like it was a trophy, or a rare artifact from Italy, mounted on a stick and basking in its own technical glory. I’ve never seen a painting in the real world that used expandable corner joints, in museum storage or a gallery, or even in any documentaries about painters.

Maybe if you’re a painter in a tropical climate like Cambodia during the rainy season and then have to ship your paintings to the high dry desert for an exhibition, you might detect a change in the surface tension of the canvas—maybe then a stretcher is a good idea. Maybe if you’re commissioned to make a painting of a significant historical event for the Smithsonian, like Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, and the painting is immense and it needs to last forever—maybe then a stretcher is required. Maybe if you airbrush highly detailed western landscape imagery on linen and also forge your own hardware from scratch in your garage because the novelty is the most important thing to you—maybe then a stretcher seems necessary. Maybe if you’re a genius like Gerhard Richter, Susan Rothenberg, Georgia O’Keefe, Julian Schnabel, Mark Bradford, Julie Mehretu, or a myriad of other amazing painters and you have assistants to build things, and your paintings are purchased by collectors for hundreds of thousands of dollars, maybe millions, then maybe you use actual ‘stretchers’. That isn’t most painters though; it’s certainly not me. Stretchers with expandable joints are a technical fetish. I’m not that interested in how you hand forged the expansion hardware for your stretcher, or that you milled expandable dovetailed miter joints. That’s cool and everything; I don’t know how to hand forge anything and I’m far to impatient to mill dovetail joints. I’m more interested in the other side; the painted side.

So until the day that a museum curator, or an expert conservator, pulls me aside and tells me otherwise, every frame is a stretcher, even if the corners are overbuilt, overscrewed, overnailed and slathered with super glue.

© C. Davidson

Prairie Forward

Canvas

Near Augusta

I have a neatly folded pile of heavy cotton canvas and imagine unfolding it and attaching it to a wall. I won’t need to build a frame because I’ll gesso it on the wall, paint it on the wall, and display on a wall. I’ll need to re-arrange my current studio space to accommodate it or rent the corner of a warehouse somewhere else. Once it’s unfolded, it’ll be close to nine feet by eighteen feet. I purchased the bulk canvas years ago and used half of it for four large, stretched canvases. I’ll use what’s left to paint something big—maybe depict a big view of Montana, the Dakotas, Kansas, or Minnesota—a horizon that’s filled with soybeans, sagebrush, cattle, or wheat. It’s impossible to predict what it will become but I like thinking about it.

I imagine a space that I can walk into. Then get completely disoriented because I can’t locate myself in relation to the foreground, or the background because I’ve never been in a painting before. It might feel like an overwhelming moment on one of the countless road trips I’ve taken during the day and at night—sitting in the hot dust of August, or a brittle night in winter. At some point on every trip, I pull the vehicle over to the side of a remote road, or into an adjacent field and linger for a while. If it’s dark, I stare into the blanket of stars. Sometimes if it’s during the day, I open the tailgate and sit with my lunch, or dinner. I might even have food left that my wife prepared and a thermos of warm coffee. If it’s quiet and I’m in the middle of nowhere, the crickets, grasshoppers and meadowlarks might be loud around me. If I’m lucky, the air will be heavy with sage or sweet grass and I can just drift.

Songs :: Break My Heart Sweetly by John Moreland, and Plains (Eastern Montana Blues) by George Winston

© C. Davidson