Too Hot!!!

I have been waiting for the opportunity to paint with oils once again but the temperature outside has been brutally hot so I have to settle for drawing indoors.

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Love And Hate In The Summer

Are you having fun? I hope so. Over here I am overwhelmed by work, especially this week. I have twelve rule modules to write before the end of the week. Never mind that I have already prepared a series of rule modules for production yesterday for two projects going live next week and the next. 

However, it's work and it's good. Also this month, having to vacate my corner office with wall to wall windows for another corner office with wall to wall windows. I love windows, although what I have seen outside my windows are a series of storm clouds and lightning in between severe heat and humidity. 

My manager is retiring this week; a very good analyst and manager. She helped me do my best for my family and enabled me to do a good job at work during difficult and challenging times. I don't think I could have worked anywhere where I had to give short notice and leave for overseas, return and in three days leave work again for another overseas flight and then four months later another overseas flight. It speaks a lot about the company I work for but sometimes immediate managers and directors greatly influence a good working atmosphere. I am grateful. Good luck, S. I enjoyed everyday we worked together and will miss you. Thank you very much for everything. Our new manager is  one of our fellow teammates who also happens to be a wonderful person and a terrific analyst. He is the youngest in our team but has our overwhelming support. 

In the meantime I had the worst experience with Apple. I HATE MOUNTAIN LION!!! For the first time, I hate Apple products. I now have a very expensive MacBook that is basically functionally useless other than email and web surfing. Even surfing sucks. I cannot print, I cannot scan, I cannot edit photos with my favorite program. I cannot watch videos with Safari, only in Chrome. It was supposed to be fast and eliminate bouncing icons. Now I have more bouncing icons when I open an application. It crashed my iPod forcing me to factory reset it. I lost thousands of photo files from a different computer I no longer have. Okay, so the photos are on Carbonite and discs but having them on my iPod was nice - lost that! I hate Apple support - non existent. It wants you to read user sites. I don't want to deal with strangers?! Now I have to use two computers, Microsoft Windows to do the important work and Mac for email and reading blogs. I am so frustrated. AAAARRRRGGGHHH! 

It's as if I found this really great tasting beef jerky except I lost all my teeth!

Not everything is bad.

Since I cannot scan might as well make the most of it. I am drawing larger pieces! 14"x17" and another thing...color!!! Yes, I am using colored pigment ink. Uh oh... :) A new series called Cadena de Amor. Let Google translate the meaning. Some details below. I am on my fifth 14"x17" illustration. Also new approach, more white spaces and stepping out of my comfort zone.

Tsup!!!

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How Do You Capture Rapture?

 Just Another Street Scene in Asheville, North Carolina

Click for ENLARGED view.

I can never capture the moment quite the way it happened. A lot of it has to do with my technical and artistic limitations as a photographer. heck, I should not even be calling myself that, but most of all it is because one can never capture time. I try. This photo looks just like a street downhill but that is not what it was to me. 

I was walking with my family to a restaurant somewhere in Asheville, North Carolina one summer day. We crossed the street, busily talking with one another when I saw something from the corner of my eye. I already noticed the silvery flecks of light reflected by the clouds from the parking lot earlier. What I did not notice was in another part of the city, the clouds were gathering and thickening. It is was difficult to appreciate the sky as they were obscured by buildings and trees. 

When we crossed the street where the intersection was sloping downhill, I saw the blanket of gray rolling. My daughter lovingly admonished me in a nurturing way for standing in the middle of the street as I captured this view. My my son stood guard beside me ready to grab me away from an oncoming vehicle.  My husband tolerates all of these and patiently waited. My family is used to my eccentricities. Photographing trees, clouds, leaves wherever we go and carrying a drawing board. It feels rather nice to be free to do these things and being accommodated by my company. Sometimes they call my attention; "Look Mom! Look at the clouds (or trees)!

Not quite the way I saw it but there it is. Just another street scene but it plays differently in my mind. Look around you. You might see something and keep it in your mind.

"Enlarged" - I love that term. My father had a photograph enlarger in his darkroom. I still remember the smell of acid fixers and how cold the whole room was, almost air-conditioned..

.

Nice Hips

 

The Middle Is The Beginning And The End

or 

A Sleepless Night

Pigment ink on 2.5"x3.5" Bristol Board

The middle of the year, for some people, is the beginning of summer vacation but the end of the fiscal year for me. This is the busiest time of the year for my husband's work and mine, as if it can get busier. It is a more stressful time as if it can get more stressful, but there it is. So while I am trying to figure out how I can spend summer vacation with my family, and time with my children, with not enough vacation hours from work, this time of the year is also the end of fiscal year. I have self evaluations, professional requirements, new goals, project closures, new projects, etcetera etcetera... This is also my birthday month and while it  may mean party and cake, it also means annual examinations, license renewals, medical appointments and grappling with aging. Today, the endocrinologist told me I have "nice hips" to which my husband who was in the room with me replied "I agree!" However, before you think they were admiring me physically, she was not, he may have, she was merely evaluating the appropriateness of a recommended drug therapy. Ah life! Hope you are all well.

May God bless you!

How I Spent My Summer Vacation

How My Brother Spent His Summer Vacation. Pigment ink 8"x10" on 11"x14" Bristol Board. Click on image to enlarge (this time I posted large) to illustrate the hidden wonders but only for those who see...do you see my brother?

For My Brother:

My brother, the electrical engineer, Mathematics professor, recorder of flora,

Went all over the volcano mountain island 

filled with wonders and came back with nary a souvenir,

not even a pebble.

I am very proud of you. 

I wonder if I could have restrained myself 

and risked smuggling a seed or branch...just kidding.

No oak. No quercus. No cyclobalanopsis.

Ah! But we have passiflora,

platycerium superbum and alocasia macrorhizzos to start with a few.

Thank you my dearest brother for sharing your summer vacation escapades,

of mountains, streams, rivers, waterfalls and seas,

of forests, parks, preserves and gardens,

rice fields, farms and jungles,

of cities old and new, large and small,

of roads paved, rugged, steep and dangerous,

as if the land and rocks are protecting something by avenging the invasion into

the inner sanctum,

react with vengeance, 

kill and maim those who dare to drive recklessly and naively

in their luxury cruiser.

I see views majestic, awesome, bothersome, wholesome,

Of gatherings with friends old and older and best, 

while I, 

stuck at my desk with a total of seven hours of vacation time

lived vicariously through you.

Thank you for your meticulous capture of plants rare and strange,

with names Latin, Ilonggo, English all equating

to one word and for my lack of eloquence

I filled your wall with - "Wow!"

Thank you for not banning me even though I complained about the technicalities

and for publicly fussing about you and your eyesight

which you continue to ignore.

You really should take care of yourself!

Thank you for reminding me that the island I dismissed long time ago

as boring, hot and dull

is full of wonder and awe.

Filled with trees pregnant with berries on their trunks,

With shape that define the horizon and make it so Ilonggo, Negros, so familiar

I have flashbacks in sepia tone and black and white

 and I am a young girl running, running, running with a stick in my hand,

Whacking the bushes, here and there and I stop,

 for once again I see the flowers and

LEAVES!

I close my eyes:

I climb a tree, 

cradled by its branches and have fallen asleep 

as I envision everything around me:

PRESERVED, 

UNTOUCHED, 

LET ALONE, 

FREE, 

NOT OWNED.

These are leaves,

gigantic and wide as the widest umbrellas or fans which

as kids we propped over our heads when there was a sudden downpour!

Ah yes, leaves so familiar,

caudate, crenate, cordate, dentate, lanceolate.

With surfaces so glabrous, this one glaucous

and that one farinose - is that even natural?

Yes it is! 

Of strange-shaped plants and flowers  

with ties and ribbons, bells, tails, fangs, fins and teeth,

thorns, warts, weeping wounds, 

dripping with sticky liquid trapping prey and invaders.

Of monocot and dicot,

Polymorphous.

Richly taunting our imaginations

of passion, cock's comb, cat's tail, jock strap, stag horn

until we ran out of words we simply called them

body parts that will make me blush.

So many flowers and plants I have, never before in my life, seen until now...

Because you clicked your camera...

while you prostrated yourself on the ground to capture the tiniest flower, the eyes can see.

Will you please stop the car once in a while so I can really see the details of that

mucronate one with intercalary veins along the canals?

Or that elliptical...

(Look out for leaves-of-three!)

Never mind, I see the plants and flowers so strange, so different, mysterious,

bulbous, umbelliferous, velutinous.

I should be happy.

I am happy.

Thank you.

Yet I feel an aching, nagging sensation

Of anxiety and sometimes fear and

my heart sinks...

We never saw them before because they were in the JUNGLE!

But now I see they paved the road and in the midst

a concrete swimming pool.

Maybe they will domesticate the wild flowers and plants

to please the vacationers

and those who come from abroad and buy the wild lands.

Perhaps they will think of some grande idea

and consider themselves worthy for doing something for humanity by

exploring the jungle and fencing it in then turn it into a "Preserve!"

"Fifty pesos admission fee please." (To help preserve the jungle)

 (We have airconditioned rooms and swimming pool)

How grande indeed is man's folly.

And thus begins a new taxonomy of plants:

This one will cost more than the others, we keep.

And cast some as more desirable than others

and label this "precious" and that one "weed' we kill.

I see these words so prominent throughout the island:

DEVELOPED

PARK

RESORT

No no no no no no no no no...

NO!

You and I long for

WILD

FREE

FOREST

JUNGLE

MOUNTAIN.

EARTH.

Let it be...

Thank you for taking me on your summer vacation.

I hope the plants and trees will still be there next year.

I love you.

Happy Birthday!!!

Ah wait a souvenir indeed - the revenge of the shy plants. :)

I hope you are feeling better.

Tsup!

Hehehehehe!

Did you find the rat, the dragonflies, the beetle, the ants, the bees, moths, snake, butterflies, catterpillars...whew!

Now you have poison ivy!

My brother's birthday is not until later this month but since he was the first one to greet me on my birthday (he is 12 hours ahead of our time here), I want to be the first one to greet him, weeks in advance!