Painting in "Plein Air"

Since we became part-time residents of the Finger Lakes region of western New York, Ponczka has become part of the arts community there. In particular, she has become a regular participant in a couple of “Plein Air” festivals, which celebrate the practice of painting in nature, out of the immediate experience of a time and place. Plein air painting requires an element of surrender to the elements, however they might manifest, and challenges the artist to convert an experience directly to canvas.

This week, Ponczka and I have been in Geneva, on the northwestern shore of Seneca Lake, where the Seneca Lake Plein Air Painting Festival is drawing to a close. It’s a great time for the two of us, who have come to regard this region as part of “God’s backyard”, to borrow a Polish expression. It also feels more and more like home, like the place we’ll be coming to when working for a living is not so much our focus, and when what we do will be measured more by the satisfaction it brings than by the size of a paycheck. Painting is what Ponczka is likely to be doing when that time comes; I aim to be writing.

And this Plein Air painting festival offers a tantalizing glimpse into the potential of such a future. First – it’s astonishing to see what gets produced in a mere two days, by a bunch of artists enduring sun, wind and rain for two days, trying to capture scenes despite constantly shifting light and shadows, and with the challenge of managing easels and paints, heat and cold, distractions, tiring eyes and muscles, transportation, the need to eat and sleep, uncertainty and self-doubt, and the relentless passage of time, which transforms the subject of the painting between every brushstroke.

It’s dazzling and inspiring to see the range of conversations that take place between artist and environment – how this one speaks to the vegetation, that one to the hills, one to the waters, another to the rich earth; one communes with buildings, another with the sky; this one catches the movement, another the deep, solemn stillness underlying all movement. Some paintings aim to capture a single moment, while others are steeped in timelessness. Some dance with color and light; others forego all sparkle or shine and emerge from some weighty place, singing the language of gravity, transcending life and death. So much beauty, seemingly from nothing. But that they exist at all says so much about the fertility of that apparent nothingness.

It’s a fun and exhausting and thrilling and fearful two days. Ponczka is studiously attentive to what she sees and transposes to canvas. But her painting – to my eye – can seem almost aimless and without care. It’s fascinating to watch her quick hand, swiping and stabbing the brush almost recklessly it can seem, while her eye darts from subject to canvas. I sometimes cringe inwardly as she smears on dabs of color – “NO, not that! Not There!” I’m thinking, as she gets it all wrong. But of course, I’m not seeing what she’s seeing.

So I turn away, or wander off for an hour or two, find a place for a beer, or sit and write for awhile. And when I come back, there are no more dabs of paint on a canvas, but instead, three dimensional life. But not exactly life, because... well, there’s so much on the canvas that it calls me to look again at that street scene she’s painted. It doesn’t look quite the same anymore. I see more now, feel more, want more. Connect more…? Something. There is something more now, between me and this street, that I draw from this canvas that has her eyes and her energy all mixed in with it, and with the brick and the grass, and that wall rising up, and that window, and that vague walking figure.

And everyone sees something different. In every painting. At the gala this evening, the awards are given out, and all the works are up for silent auction. Many pieces are sold, most to a solitary bidder. But others are hotly contested. And quite a few get no bids at all. One of the top prize winners has no bids on her work, but it is rich and detailed and evocative of time and memory, and the awards are clearly deserved. And while no one has yet bid to have one of the works adorn a wall in a home, one of the awards comes from a musical association that will use her work to style its programs and announcements for the coming year. And Ponczka gets no bid on her piece that both she and I like best, but another is purchased by the same couple that bought her work last year, and who happen to be the festival organizers.

It’s Art. And every eye, every taste is unique unto itself. And, as Ponczka likes to say – every painting has its rightful owner, but it can take mere moments or many years for the two to find one another.
 

A Perfect Hour

We went to say goodbye to Cape Croker. At least I did. It's been a special place for me. It's somewhere to go to stretch myself open, to see what's rumbling around inside. I play my sax there. I make pancakes on a little burner in the mornings - my fruit inside, hers on top. I float in the hammock. I meditate. I read, I write. We have sex, great meals. We drink too much wine probably. We watch the thick river of stars in the black sky, and the embers dancing up off the fire. Me meet people who are easy to meet, they being as relaxed and happy as we are. I sometimes, but not always, climb up into the thick woods on top of the escarpment. More often, I just move along the beach a little ways from the camp site, where the sand and rocks have squeezed out all but the hardiest vegetation. I listen for the sounds of the birds and the insects.

I say that this is my spiritual place. And it is - me, without any formal practice, but with a wandering and wondering something inside me that needs a home. There's a meeting here, between that yearning and that destination. There's a knitting, resolving kind of energy that I find, or that finds me, seeping up out of the rocky, patient earth, thrashing about on the moody winds.

I went with a goodbye to say because next week we may take possession of Cloud. And Cloud is a place we will own - which isn't of course the right word for it. How to own land which will be here long after me; which will never come to me, but always draw me toward it, which will harbor and rest me...nourish me in ways I am already dreaming about. No ownership here. Let's say that we are stepping more deeply into a relationship with a place. And that relationship will involve centering and orienting and balancing, and whatever other things one can do with a place.

It can't ever, of course, but it will, in some ways, replace what Cape Croker has been to me. It's a place to which we intend to bring out creativity, and the parts of us that are reaching for space and for the simple rhythms of being. We will come back to Cape Croker - as early as next month for the Pow Wow. And we expect to come at least once a year. But who knows? And even so, there will be Cloud, and so less will be brought here, less will be sought here.

So now, about the perfect hour. It was our last one there. We never leave Cape Croker when others are gathering up to beat the traffic. Our favorite times are always when the weekenders have left and the place is near empty. Some week-long campers will come in and settle down. But Sunday afternoons and evenings are always quiet and calm; the weather is always perfect. And so on Sunday.

I had wanted to be on the road by six, but at five we weren't even close to ready. I said we should get going and eat on the way. Ponczka wanted to cook the sausages she'd bought from the Polish store. But that will keep us too long, I protested. Work tomorrow. So we hustled for a bit. But, well...she really didn't want to settle for fast food, and so Ponczka cooked the sausage after all. And there was green tomato salad, great crusty bread with seeds, some mustard, grilled peppers from the night before. And there were two bottles of cold, cold beer that we'd forgotten about.

It was one of those times when the food you are eating seems to be the only food possible to eat. How could there be any other? We sat under the glowing sky, almost packed, ate and drank and were happy.

When we were ready to go, we gathered a few rocks to carry to Cloud. And while we stood looking out at the bay, Ponczka said what a perfect time it would be to go in the water. We were sticky and we had the road ahead of us - three or four hours. Why not? We parked away from where we'd camped, close to the road heading out, peeled off our clothes, dug out our damp swim gear, and stepped out into the cool water. It was so shallow in this end that twenty steps in we were only thigh deep. The sun was just hovering over the bluff, in its pool of red light. The water sparkled and the air whistled softly. We lay ourselves upon the water and floated. The water was so still, everything so perfectly balanced and tranquil that we closed our eyes and let the water hold us. I remembered the mantra from yoga class, the invitation to keep relaxing more, and I let go of my hold on my muscles and felt my body softening, progressively, a bit more with every other faint outward breath.

If a place can embrace a person, and kiss every portion and particle of him, that's what Cape Croker did to me. Ponczka and I came up out of the water feeling our every pore had been flushed through, every muscle and tendril wiped clean. All was right with the world. I can't imagine the possibility of feeling better. It was a perfect hour.

A Talent For Me

It might just be the most romantic and intimate thing ever said to me. It’s a statement of depth and wisdom that speaks to the complexities of relationship, the requirements for making one work, and that hints at the challenges of time. And, as a writer with a special appreciation for a well turned phrase, I knew immediately that I’d never express it any better than she had.

The subject was us, the relationship between my woman and I. And the speaker was that woman, Marzena, whom I call Ponczka. She said to me one day, as we were wondering at how fresh, alive and rich our relationship felt, after several years together, “You have a talent for me.”

Her words had the immediate ring of truth – that we both have a talent for each other. Because it isn’t that we’re successful because of any mastery over abstract skills or character traits, like honesty, selflessness or a capacity for love. It’s rather that we ‘fit’. There is a compatibility between us that is so strong that we succeed with one another when we are most ourselves. I’ve said something to her that relates to her beautiful summing up, but is much less elegant, that while I know she isn’t perfect, she’s perfect for me. So much is about how we match and compliment each other.

But talent is more than fitting. To be an instrument for generating life, a talent has to be developed. And we’ve both recognized that our talent for one another has been developed through our previous relationships, through our disappointments, through all our absorbing of the realities of life.

We’ve learned, for example, to let small grievances go, as well as the judgement and irritation of unmet expectations. We’ve learned that giving is its own reward, to be appreciated for our own willingness to give, rather than held hostage for appreciation and thanks that may not always come, at least not in the quantity and manner we expect. We’ve learned to accept one another for who we are – and that the difficult things we present to one another are all part of a package. And one of the most potent aspects of our talent – and one we have lots of occasion to laugh about – is that we know what to take seriously in one another’s complaints, demands and declarations, and what to ignore. Well, perhaps not ignore, but...not take so seriously. And it’s not always a matter of the what, often it’s merely about the when or the how of something said or done. After all, part of the blessing of an intimate relationship is the freedom to occasionally mis-speak or mis-behave, even to mis-feel. It’s a freedom of being taken for more than you present at the moment, the grace of being taken for the broader self you are, known and unknown.

I increasingly recognize that because of Ponczka’s talent for me I am able to grow and stretch beyond what I already am, beyond what I already know of myself. Her talent for me is an expression of love and acceptance. It creates a safe, home space, a kind of sanctuary. And the more solid it is, the more I can safely explore, the more I can look outward, trusting that foundation I move from. It’s why I can be such a child with her, and she with me. It’s not taking for granted, but close to that. The difference is in seeing, knowing and acknowledging what’s there, rather than, well...taking for granted.

A talent for me. Yes, recognizing small distinctions, being sensitive to time, having patience to know, to wait, to listen, and a giving quality that is a constant reward to itself. No, I’ll never express it any better than that.

Sailing the Good Ship Ponczka

Ponczka was born to captain her own ship.

On our first date, by way of introducing herself, alerting me that I was dealing with a woman of substance, and letting me know what I was in for, she announced how in the office of the architectural design company where she worked, she had all the guys trained. “They all know,” she declared, “that when it comes to working with me, it’s my way or the highway!” and she burst out with her characteristic, cartoony laugh.

Ponczka likes to steer her own course, and she has unlimited ideas about where she’d like to go and what she’d like to do. Which is what led to my role as First Mate and lackey on the Good Ship Ponczka, otherwise known as Bubbles, or Wannabe, or the Bathtub.

Let me tell you how I first learned that sailing was in my future.
Among other things, Ponczka is an artist, a painter of acrylic cityscapes which sell really well, and which her buyers tell her capture the spirit and energy of the city. She generally participates in two or three outdoor art shows a year, where she sits and drinks her red wine, with old friends who visit, and with the new friends she invariably makes, cajoling and laughing her way into the graces of both other artists and potential customers.

A few years ago, she was working the Queen West Art Crawl, and I, as always, was keeping her company and making coffee and food runs. Upon returning from one such errand, I found Ponczka excited and beaming.

“I just got us a sailboat!” she announced.

“I was gone about 45 minutes,” I said. “What happened?”

Well, you see, she’d done some painting, outdoors, en plein air, on the Toronto Islands. And some of the pieces featured boats in the small marina at Hanlan’s Point. Now, she was no sailor. She’d been sailing maybe three or four times in her life, twice the sailing I’d done. But she’d said, during the one sail we’d had together, that she always thought she’d like to have a boat someday. And she repeated this notion to a guy who stopped to admire her paintings. He focused on the boat paintings, and said how he admired them, as he was a passionate sailor. He had no money, but once she mentioned her longing, he let her know that he did have a couple of boats that had been sitting in cradles unused for a couple of years. And by the time I returned with fish and chips and club soda, the two of them had hatched a deal. For a bit of cash and three paintings, Ponczka would become the owner of a twenty foot sail boat.

I admit I wasn’t overjoyed at the prospect. I knew from sailing friends that the hobby is obsessive, labor intensive and expensive. Some hobbyists spend way more time on upkeep and maintenance than actually sailing. And didn’t we have enough hobbies and sidelines to keep us busy? But I kept my tongue bit down to a nub and the deal was finalized. After all, I wasn’t against the idea so much as ambivalent. There was lots that appealed about owning a sailboat: it was large enough to sleep on and would be like a miniature, mobile cottage; there seemed to be a community of interesting and friendly boaters ready to welcome us; it was both a green pursuit and a beautiful science, channelling the forces of wind and waves; and then there was simply the romance of blowing about on the vast lake, exploring an entirely other dimension of city life, one that echoed through the ages of human kind.

The hardest part for me has been feeling unnatural in the alien environment of the sea. And to me, any natural body of water larger than a pond might as well be the sea...or the ocean. The liquid part of the world operates differently than the solid part, and the laws of physics that I know and understand, don’t apply there as consistently as they should.

So we got the boat, and Ponczka was immediately won over. From the beginning, she’d have sailed every weekend if she could. She had her moments, sure. On one of our first sails, tutored by a sailing friend, she was like a kid bouncing with eagerness to get on board and out on the water, and five minutes later was bouncing with nervous upset and annoyance at the lapping and slapping light waves, and insisting we head for shore.

But all that’s in the past. Now Ponczka is the intrepid captain who wants to sail when she wants to sail. Phooey on those forecasts that say there’s a sixty percent chance of rain.

“Look at the sky. You can plainly see it’s not gonna rain. Besides, it’s perfect for sailing. If it starts to storm, we put down the engine and head back in.”

I’m the one reminding her that, well, we don’t really know what we’re doing. It can get hairy out here in a hurry...

I don’t feel safe.

So, like in everything else, we find a tolerable compromise, and we sail the edges of storm clouds, drink wine and have a hell of a time.