Work In Progress

When you don’t hear from me for a long time, it’s because I’m working. Or rather, stumbling around in some new rabbit hole, and trying to make something of the things I find. This I call work. Clearly it’s not the kind that pays bills, or the kind you avoid like cleaning the oven or going to the DMV, but the kind that is so engaging that you forget to go on social media to talk about yourself for weeks on end. I’ve been working on some new paintings for a show I have coming up, so there is some degree of external pressure, but no one is standing over me, checking on my progress or providing direction, so it remains pretty soulful work. I’m thankful for that freedom.

The only reason I bother to write this now is that Facebook algorithms have goaded me into it. Every week I get a little reminder about my Facebook page - the one for my artwork - that tells me how many visits I’ve had and that sort of thing. It usually tries to guilt me into posting something new by saying “You haven't visited Mark Penner Howell in a while and there's some activity you might have missed. To keep people interested in your Page, please post something new or respond to some of your new activity.” Given the language, it’s easy to suppose Facebook is just looking out for me, but when I consider that any post I make must also be “boosted” by paying real money to reach my audience, then Facebook’s actual motivation is laid bare. Their feigned concern is just a programmed message triggered by my prolonged inactivity. And still, I have to admit the Facebook bots are correct, it’s been a while.

For an artist trying to create a new body of work, it’s necessary to carve out a distraction-free work environment (both the physical space, and somehow also your state of mind), and to stay in that space as long as possible, returning to it often, until your new “work” becomes clear to you. This is basic stuff for any practicing creative person, but the thing I often need to remind myself is to go as deep as I can and stay there as long as possible, especially in the initial stages of creative exploration, before coming up for air. The temptation is to commit to halfway decent ideas, familiar ideas, before you’ve discovered something truly new. The tricky part is to slow down and linger with your inspiration and really stretch out the time you spend in that concentrated state of creative flux. For me it’s an act of discipline that usually precludes the use of social media in the studio. Apologies, Facebook.

The guy across the table from me in the coffee shop this morning asked where I get my inspiration. We were meeting to discuss a commissioned piece. I was flummoxed by the question, as I usually am, since there is no one answer. I wish there was a kind of psychic Costco where I could just stock up on ideas. Then I could simply give him directions. Instead I told him most artists have a catalog of themes or image fragments or half finished stories that just sort of bob around in the back of the mind until a catalyst begins to pull some of those pieces together. I have found this mostly to be a function of the subconscious. Something at work in that protean mental engine causes the good ideas (or at least the shiny, attractive ones) to bubble up to the threshold of consciousness. The conscious mind need only be on duty, or at least nearby, to receive the thought. This experience of suddenly wakening to a fresh idea is what people have taken to calling the “aha” moment. The mumbo-jumbo part is that practically anything can trigger it.

 To any severely left-brained person, this is all going to sound like utter horse shit. Sure there are things that can make creative inspiration more likely, but they aren’t remotely quantifiable or repeatable in a laboratory setting. Recently I spent a whole weekend trying to have some exciting new ideas for paintings. Right away the half-decent ones began to present themselves, but nothing seemed worth diving into. The weekend was a wash. The following Monday morning I went about doing some of the chores I’d avoided all weekend. At the grocery store, while scanning my rewards card, the friendly voice inside the machine said “Welcome, valued customer.” That message was all I needed to pull together a whole host of ideas I’d been having about materialism, fate, and the power of the individual. I already had most of the images I needed in my head but they needed some sort of context. And though the phrase wasn’t remotely visual, it suddenly provided the framework for me to organize my thoughts so I could begin pushing the images around in a meaningful way. This, I’m afraid, is as close as I can come to describing my inspiration. I regret it isn’t more stirring or provocative.

I have an artist friend who routinely talks about her muse. I’ve always thought the idea of a muse is sort of romantic and fey. For the longest time I assumed she was just being metaphorical, but she’s so consistent in her personalization of this inspirational force, and so reverent toward “her,” that I’ve begun to realize my friend’s muse is more literal than I had allowed for. It works for her. Every artist has some personal version of this, we just talk about it differently. My own religious background makes me wonder to what extent the creative impulse isn’t the distant echo or fingerprint of the divine somehow still at work in the world - another seemingly antiquated idea, for sure, but also workable. So whether you think creativity is a function of a trans-personal “collective” unconscious that forever seeks expression in order to ensure the adaptability of our species, or whether it’s the work of the Holy Spirit, we’re kind of all talking about the same thing. In the end all these distinctions may be false dichotomies. A subject as big as the mechanism of creative impulse is at the limits of our language to describe. Multiple points of view are to be encouraged.

Back in my basement studio sit four new paintings in various states of completion. None of them are actually ready for you to look at. One has recently emerged from an extended ugly-duckling phase and just today I realized it’s the one all the others are going to have to live up to. You artists know what I mean. If I’m lucky and stay focused, I might eke out one or two others that do what they are supposed to do as well as this one. We’ll see. I’ve only got a few more weeks to finish everything up for my next show. Until then you’ll have to use your imagination, and this will have to serve as an update. It’s a paltry offering, but hopefully enough to appease the almighty Facebook data gods.

Waving at the sky

Buffalo Creek burn scar – Photo: Kae Penner-Howell

 Wondering and Wandering 

 I can’t say exactly why we chose to hike for half a day on this little-used and not particularly scenic section of the Colorado Trail. Maybe because we were bored with the familiar beauty of the nearby Buffalo Creek trails and needed something new. By contrast, this windswept footpath meanders through a decades-old burn scar. The mostly flat route offers little in the way of navigational challenges, and even as a specimen of devastation it isn’t much to look at. The fire that raged here was so hot even the topsoil caught fire. Subsequent flooding and erosion ensured no forest would soon return. What remains is an undulating boulder field with a ribbon of single-track snaking through it, a few skeletal spires that once were pine trees, and the kind of grasses that can eke out a life on cracks in rocks. Still we opt to give it a go. To see what we may see.


A trail that winds through a forest naturally accommodates the landscape. It twists and turns according to the placement of trees and creeks, drop-offs, and bodies of water. But when the trees burn up and the creeks run dry, the shape of the remaining path ceases to make the same kind of sense. In the years since the fire, this trail has straightened itself out a little, but there are still the occasional zigs and zags that suggest phantom obstacles. The ghosts of trees long incinerated. It is mildly disorienting to hike such a path, its layout strangely at odds with the land it tries to make accessible. Like the solemn, circuitous route one follows to the center of a labyrinth laid in stone on a cathedral floor, I begin to wonder if the point of all this winding has something to do with observance of a ritual, its purpose long ago lost in flames.

Chartres Cathedral maze. Image: Wiki-Commons

We begin to look for some sort of destination, a place to call our journey complete. Maybe somewhere with a view where we can eat our sandwiches. A hill in the distance is crowned by a small stand of Ponderosa pines, unlikely survivors of the Buffalo Creek Fire. Surely there would be decent views of the Continental Divide from up there, and the trees could provide some shade for our lunch. We agree to make it our turn-around point, but as we get closer the trail angles away disappointingly into a rocky ravine. Having already fixed our expectations on that summit, we decide we are done with the trail, and begin to climb.


There is something thrilling about going off-trail (where allowed by law, and common sense), even in a place like this where being on or off the trail are nearly identical. The first step off a path always initiates a heightened awareness in me. I’m careful about how and where I walk, both to lessen my impact in a place unaccustomed to human footfalls, and also for reasons of safety and efficiency of effort. To exit the well-worn trail is to commit to your own wits. Each step is a tiny symbolic rejection of the known. Admittedly this isn’t much of an undertaking in a denuded landscape where the way home is more-or-less apparent. Still, there are places not far from here where to walk just a few feet from the trail renders it, and all it represents, indistinguishable from the natural world that surrounds it – the way back home can suddenly be obliterated by nothing more than a field of tall grass and wildflowers, humbling in their complete indifference to us. Like astronauts on a space walk, we are tethered to all that is safe and familiar by contrivances of human effort. Good trails allow us to pretend we are better connected with the natural world than we may actually be.

Photo: Kae Penner-Howell

Up on the hill we find an old dirt road running along through the trees. It leads out into a meadow and across a grassy ridge where it doubles back abruptly in a tight loop, as if changing its mind. The fire has opened up unnatural vistas here - the kind you would ordinarily have 4000 feet higher, where trees simply won’t grow. To the north, the icy Mount Evans massif glows blue-white on the horizon. Ahead of us, a few yards past where the road ends, we see what looks like a small brick chimney. Heading over to check it out, we find it’s only about 4’ tall and completely solid - not a chimney at all, but some sort of marker set on a round flagstone base. About a foot above the base are three concentric iron rings circling the structure like the rings of Saturn, but also like some sort of footrest, or step. On top of the structure is a brass survey marker set in concrete. This is what surveyors call a benchmark, and it is where we get that word. But why the metal rings, and the large flagstone base? The structure is only mildly perplexing at first, like any sort of old weathered object you might stumble across while hiking.  But when we step around to the other side and see a plaque which reads: HISTORIC UFO MOORING POST, things start to get interesting.

I’ve heard of Hippies and New-Agers appointing themselves ambassadors to extraterrestrials. There’s even a UFO landing pad in the desert down near New Mexico, but it’s sort of a tourist thing. Is this a cultural remnant of such an effort? We busy our brains with all the possibilities. Did a UFO-believer commandeer an old government survey post, or was it the other way around? Or maybe they collaborated on this dual-purpose marker in the middle of nowhere. This is Colorado after all. We have a town with a house cat for mayor (Divide), another town with a festival to raise money for a home-made cryogenics experiment (Frozen Dead Guy Days in Nederland), and a town where all adult head-of-housholds are required to own guns (Nucla) - and I’m only getting started with the civic weirdness in Colorado. It’s conceivable this marker was some such partnership. Or it could simply be somebody’s obscure joke. The word ‘historic” could be a giveaway. Do the plaque-makers mean to say that UFOs used to moor here at some point long ago? Have the UFOs moved on to more updated mooring posts? And how did they moor, exactly? I picture flying saucers bobbing gently a few feet off the ground, a pair of long leather reigns looped around the mooring post. It starts to seem like it has to be a joke, but why? Nerd humor? It’s impossible to know, and there’s not a soul for miles to ask, so we snap a photo and begin to look for a suitable way down the hill.

Photo: Kae Penner-Howell

Below, we see another forest service road and pick our way carefully down through loose talus to meet it. As we guessed, around a bend or two the road delivers us back to our trail, which we dutifully retrace for several dull miles back to our car. In defense of boring trails, let me point out they are a reliable way to get lost in your own thoughts while obtaining the health benefits of a low intensity work-out, if you’re into that sort of thing. For me, this kind of mobile meditation tends to deliver me to my daydreams. Before long I’m crunching along in a half trance, staring down at the left-right-left-right blur of my feet, when all at once a door opens onto a memory I had long ago boxed away. Our visit up that hill had guaranteed this door would fly open, but I hadn’t seen it coming. The memory that overtakes me is less the recollection of an event, and more the story of the memory of the event. A story I long ago stopped telling, even to myself.


A Thing in the Sky

There was a puzzling thing in the sky over our car. My mom was driving, my little brother was in the front seat next to her. I was in the back. We were headed west on a country road in upstate New York on a late summer afternoon. The thing in the sky appeared to move along beside us, a few dozen yards off to the side. Was it following us or simply headed the same direction? My little brother shrieked and dove into the footwell of the passenger seat where he huddled in a fetal position. Was he terrified or just being dramatic? This was in the days when seat belts were a mere suggestion and children were pretty much free to move about the car as they wished. I moved over against the window. Mom gripped the steering wheel tighter and sped up. Was she trying to outrun the thing or simply hurrying home to change the situation? I wished my brother would sit up. I could not take my eyes off the thing in the sky. I stared and stared but couldn’t get a fix on it. It was so completely outside my frame of reference that I wasn’t able to decide what it was. It was big as a house, but smooth and elongated. Like a blimp but smaller and sleeker. There did not appear to be windows, and there were no insignia or graphics of any kind on its surface. It had a row of small lights in a horizontal band which ran its length, and though it shames me deeply to say this, the lights were indeed green. After several minutes beside us, the thing in the sky rocketed off to the south, disappearing beyond the big hill on the Rosecrance farm.



Soon we were safe at home in our driveway, un-traumatized. There had been no alien abduction. No anal probes. I didn’t have nightmares or 'act out' after this. Instead, the feeling I remember having afterward was disappointment. I wasn’t done looking at the thing. I hadn’t figured out what I thought it was, or even which end I was looking at. I felt cheated. It was yet another cool thing that had ended too quickly. In days that followed I kept looking to the skies, hoping the thing would swing back over my neighborhood, and a little frightened it actually might.

Ezikel's Chariot vision, by Matthaeus Merian

When our dad got home he did not laugh at our story, probably because my mom was pretty freaked out. We talked about it a lot at first, but only as a family. Why had it happened to us? We didn’t even believe in such things. We were good Christian people. Our superstitions were entrenched in orthodoxy. We weren’t given to fringy group hallucinations. Then someone pointed out the bible describes something like UFOs in the book of Ezekiel. This helped. Not because it explained anything, but knowing it was in the bible meant God was probably wise to it. Even so, before long we stopped talking about the thing in the sky because we simply didn’t know what to make of it. I knew instinctively it wasn’t a good idea to speak of it outside the family. I’ve only slipped up once or twice since then - until now - and the effect was never good. Try to imagine how alienating and disgraceful it is to have a first-hand UFO story. It actually makes dreadful party talk – guaranteed to make you seem paranoid, conspiratorial, or very bi-polar. You learn to keep the memory stashed away in a box in the back of your mind. And every time you get it out and re-remember it, it proves to be an almost useless thing.

Almost Useless

I’m startled back into the here-and-now by the partly decomposed carcass of a small animal just ahead of me on the trail, its rib bones jutting out at broken angles. Probably it’s a rabbit, given the grayish fur with tufts of white. I holler at my dogs to LEAVE IT, using my most serious voice. They nose it quickly – because I told them not to – but seem uninterested. As I pass the carcass I watch it literally transform from a decaying animal to a trampled prickly pear cactus. Shreds of dried gray grass are tangled in it’s spines. A white fuzzy mold covers its blackened fruit. It’s a simple mistake of perception with quite different implications. I puzzle for a moment as my brain abandons one certainty for another.



It’s a wonder that our species not only survives, but flourishes, when we are so unscrupulous about the particulars of the real world. We see a thing and are certain of it. A moment later the thing changes completely and so does its meaning. A dead rabbit becomes a cactus.  We may be momentarily flummoxed, but the neural pathways in our brains accommodate the updated information. We adapt, despite the mental dissonance we feel in the wake of our initial perception. Clearly our brains are only partly hard-wired to think a certain way, otherwise we would stick to our conclusions, no matter what. Luckily there’s a whole lot of gray matter where our neurons keep their affiliations loose. This flexibility seems to be a good thing, and may be the advantage that keeps day-dreamers in the gene pool. Evolution would suggest that being half-aware of our surroundings wouldn’t work to our favor as a species, yet somehow our partial engagement with reality frees us up to be creative problem-solvers. We seem to be the only species where beliefs, ideologies, visions and outright delusions are foundational to some of our greatest discoveries and accomplishments. Think pyramids, nuclear bombs. Las Vegas.



I decide to ask my mom and brother what they remember about that UFO event. 



As we near our car the surroundings resolve into something more familiar and ordinary. Gone are the fire-haunted boulder fields and disorienting views. Later at home, I use Google Earth to fly over our route to see if the satellite photos yield any additional insight into this odd corner of the mountains. It’s easy enough to locate the UFO mooring post, if you know where to look, but I’m surprised to see the road that accesses it seems to be off limits. Zooming down to Street View, I can make out a locked gate and a No Trespassing sign where the road meets the highway. Evidently, extraterrestrials are welcome, but you and I, not so much.



A week later at Thanksgiving dinner with my family, I mention the thing in the sky. It’s been 45 years since the afternoon it shadowed us down that country road, so I’m not hopeful my mom and brother have any better access to primary memories than I do. We haven’t spoken of it in decades. Still I want to know what they do recall, and if their stories intersect with mine – or if we’ve all drifted hopelessly away into private embellishments. Somehow, even mentioning the thing in the sky sends my mom and brother into animated re-tellings of their own versions. They begin comparing notes and suddenly all hope for objectivity is lost. My brother remembers far too many details for a kid who spent almost the whole time on the floor of the car. But he did recall that the object seemed to be glowing, as if illuminated from within. I picture the blurry glow from inside one of those inflatable Frosty the Snowman-type lawn ornaments. This triggers a strong recollection and I feel that his memory of this detail may be correct. Maybe it did glow. Or maybe I’ve heard my brother’s story so many times that what I’m feeling is a nostalgia for his version of it. It’s impossible to know. My mom only remembers that there was something large following along side us, low in the sky, and that she was concerned about getting us all home safely. No other details mattered to her.



After dinner my brother redeems himself by pulling up several websites on his i-pad with information that could corroborate our experience. He’s not a UFO enthusiast. More of a research junkie. One website is a searchable database of thousands of UFO sightings compiled from reports stretching far back into the last century. It seems there were many, many descriptions of odd things in the sky in our neck of the woods around the time in question. Spinning disks, glowing orbs, hovering boomerangs and silent cigar-shaped projectiles. They appeared day or night, to many or few. What is it with UFO sightings in rural areas? I wonder. Are extraterrestrials obsessed with our agricultural practices? Or do city people just not bother with objects in the sky?



Another website indicates we lived near a small air force base - a possible point of origin for test flights of experimental military aircraft. Aha! I decide this is the answer I like best. I have no idea whether it is true. I just like it because it seems reasonable and doesn’t demand a thing of me. No major shift in beliefs. This was during the Cold War, after all, the Baroque era at the Pentagon, when our military leader’s most creative thinking was poured into the absurd proliferation of experimental gadgetry, much of it useless and unfeasible. 



And so the family arrives at the place we always do with the thing in the sky, a place of familiar unknowing, where a shrug or a “who can say?” signals we are done with the topic, and the conversation is again free to drift where it will. Later in my room, my thoughts return to experimental flying things. I am drawn in by several images that Google serves up under the search term “experimental military blimps.” It could have been this one. Or that one. I picture them each taking a turn flying beside our car, low and silent. Each is equally feasible.



Human Benchmark

Stapelton control tower.
Image: Wiki-Commons

I was born in an airport. I live at an airport. Two preposterous yet ordinary truths. The first is explained by the fact that my hometown airport, originally a hub for Air Mail service in upstate New York, outlived its logistical purposes and was re-fitted as a community hospital. I was born there a few years later. It still looked like an airport when I was a kid. Every time I ended up there for stitches or a shot, I could pretend I was going on a fancy trip somewhere. But we never flew anywhere, except for one time when we came to Colorado on vacation. We flew into the old Stapleton Airport in Denver.
Today I live on the site of that airport. The Stapleton neighborhood in east Denver was redeveloped as a massive 'urban infill' project after the airport was relocated in the 1990’s. I’ve pored over vintage maps and determined that our house sits roughly at the far end of the old Concourse E.

Prior to moving here, that family vacation was my only experience of Colorado. It was two summers after the UFO event, and my parents used some inheritance money to bring us out to a Dude Ranch. It was our first and only vacation that wasn’t a car trip. We bought 'western' shirts at the one department store in our town before the trip. At the Stapleton airport, the dude ranch shuttle driver spotted us immediately. We drove down through the Rampart Range to the Lost Valley Ranch down near Deckers. I was twelve years old and completely smitten with Colorado. I knew I could probably never live here, but for the price of a black felt cowboy hat from the Lost Valley Ranch gift shop, I could pretend. Six states and thirty-five years later I moved to Colorado. I learned the dude ranch had been nearly destroyed by the Hayman forest fire a few years ago. The buildings were spared, but thousands of acres of trees in every direction were burned to the ground. It turns out this ranch is just a stones throw from the burn area where we recently found the UFO mooring station.

These fragments of happenstance are benchmarks in an oddball narrative I’m still somewhere in the middle of experiencing. We’ve all got some version of this. Like pins on a big map that I can’t get up high enough to read, my coincidences may be proof of some sort of pattern beyond my reckoning. It’s possible I’ll never know. It turns out I’m not that much of a stickler for certainty anyway. I’ve never found my own attempts to apprehend it to be that reliable. Each time I think I’ve solved some big life question, a constellation of unknowns circles in to fill the void. Maybe the acquisition of certainty would matter more to me if I were a religious fundamentalist or an atheist. Instead, the need to have all the answers seems like a very useless anxiety.


In Buddhism there is the notion that some things are flat-out unknowable. Buddha is said to have refused any discussion of them whatsoever. These are known as the 14 Unanswerable Questions, and each has to do with things like the nature of the self, whether time and space are infinite, whether there is an afterlife, and so on. Delineating each of these questions with a number and specific description seems to belie the fact that they are unanswerable, but Buddha said that to entertain them is a craving which leads to sickness and misery. 



The early Christian church had a similar approach to questions of ultimate knowledge, best exemplified by a philosophy called the “Via Negativa,” an apophatic theology now mostly lost to contemporary evangelical Christianity, but still widely practiced in the Eastern Orthodox Church. This perspective insists that God (or the Ultimate Good) can only be described in the negative, since what IT is, is wholly beyond our comprehension or ability to describe. Therefore, we can say that God is not evil, God is not ignorant, and so on. But here’s where it gets extra squirrely: God can neither be said to exist, nor to not exist, because all questions of existence are framed by limits of the human intellect which is a finite product of the temporal world (which by definition, God transcends). Got it? The modern mind may detect a circular logic at work here, but practitioners of this theology would argue that only by emptying the mind of all notions of God, other than pure goodness, can we hope to experience IT. This is because the Divine cannot be discovered, but must reveal itself to us. Prayer is said to be the mechanism to make this experience accessible, but the practice of humility, thankfulness and love are the virtues that make it possible.



Religion aside (whew!), it’s unlikely anyone would argue that the practice of humility, thankfulness and love isn’t the exact right path to be on at all times. Not that any of those three virtues are easy. The key idea is that they become a practice. I think about this stuff a lot when I’m out hiking in the mountains, particularly if I’m alone, though I’ve never actually set out to be contemplative. Usually I just want to explore some new trail. But then it just sort of happens, an effect of silence, the physical rhythm of hiking, and the awe I feel at my surroundings. It’s easy to be thankful at such times, and when thankfulness kicks in, humility and love are normally pretty close by. It may not be a traditional sort of spiritual path, but tromping around in the wilderness is my own Via Negativa.  
 

View toward Pettingell Peak from Continental Divide Trail. Photo: Mark Penner-Howell

One of my favorite places to explore is up on the Continental Divide, just west of Denver. Little by little I’m trying to hike as much of it as I can. Though I have logged many dozens of miles along its spine, it’s certain I’ll never complete it, given the shortness of the hiking season and the frequency of electrical storms that force me down. Recently I’ve spent a lot of time on the trails around Rollins Pass, a low spot on the Divide long considered the safest place for planes to cross over the Rocky mountains. In the days before large commercial jets - which gain altitude quickly and don’t need to look for low spots - this was the standard route for passenger flights headed west out of Denver. At 11,676’ elevation, the relative lowness of Rollins pass is debatable. Still it is the best approach for small aircraft going up and over the mountains. Nearby is a mountain I like to climb called James Peak, which rises another 1600’ above the pass. From its top you are practically at eye level with many of the planes crossing over. Because James Peak is in a remote wilderness area, by the time you reach its windy summit there may be more people nearby in the sky than on the ground. In such a setting it is impossible for me to not wave at the planes, as ridiculous as that may be. I keep my wave nice and simple - more like a salute - so pilots don’t think I’m in distress. It’s something of a privilege to serve as a human benchmark in such remote and lovely places. Whether anyone looking down takes the gesture as my way of giving testament to the impossibly strange miracle of being alive, or whether they simply have a laugh at my expense, I’ll never know. I’m just happy to be up there poking around, doing my best to live in the present, and once in a while getting a peek at the indescribable. I keep suspecting that this sort of immersion in the moment creates an intimacy with the world that is more about “being” than knowing - a more useful thing in the long run. So that is why I wave at the sky. I don’t always do it, just when someone is close enough that I know they can see me. Whether or not anyone ever waves back is unknowable, and I’m okay with that.


- m.p.h.

Continental Divide Trail, looking south near Berthoud Pass, Colorado. Photo: Mark Penner-Howell

Ice Capade

I thrust out my hand to break the fall. It’s the only thing that keeps me from fracturing a hip, or so I imagine. Even so, I land so hard on my ass it forces all the breath out of me. My dogs hover in close, helpless care-takers sniffing at me tentatively, as if their noses can decipher why their human is suddenly on the ground moaning. They cock their heads in unison, awaiting instruction. I lay there a moment gasping, and as my breath returns I use it first for cursing. I curse the neighbor for not clearing the sidewalk. Curse my poor choice in footwear. I curse the black ice hiding beneath a blanket of fresh powder.

I even have a few choice words for my mom. Not because I think this is somehow her fault, but because she is in her mid-seventies, has osteoporosis (“thin bones,” as she puts it), lives in mortal fear of ice, and yet refuses to move to a warm climate. Understand, she is of north eastern, middle-class heritage, and thus culturally (and possibly even genetically) predisposed to move to Florida at this point in her life. The fact that she won’t allow my dad to even think of moving them south has to do with her fear of running out of money, or “living too long,” as she puts it. The whole topic makes me a little crazy. And for this reason I have recorded hours and hours of HGTV’s “Beachfront Bargain” episodes, that I plan to make her watch on her next visit, as proof that she can indeed afford to not kill herself on Michigan ice.

Regaining my feet, I take a few stiff test steps. A jagged pang shoots through my hip each time my left foot comes down. I resolve to finish the dog walk as best I can. Maybe I can walk off the pain. Maybe I’ll call an ambulance. I consider the dearth of medications in my house. Possibly there would be Tylenol. Maybe a shot of tequila, but definitely there are no serious pain meds. Then I remember my dog’s leftover Tramadol scrip from an earlier injury. And thus it seems the dogs will be of some help after all. I’m certain I can Google the correct human dosage when I get home. Sure, an internet search on human consumption of veterinary meds is bound to get red-flagged and logged on some server somewhere, along with every other naughty search I’ve ever done, but I accept those terms. My server full of shameful, funny and pathetic internet searches is probably sitting right there next to yours in some impossibly large room filled with blinking LEDs. All of our online activity - if it can be called that - tracked, compiled and ready for mining, for all of eternity. Then so be it. At least I’ll get my dosage right. 

Before long the stabbing subsides to a dull ache, and I decide my misfortune is the stuff of bruises and not breaks. I limp home buoyed by the sheer thrift of appropriating my dog’s unused opioids. And that, my friends, is what hope looks like on this icy midwinter night.

“Promise me we can move to Florida before I shatter my pelvis on black ice” are my first words as I come in the house. “Or Southern California or Hawaii. Not now, but in like 10 years.” I love Colorado, but I am not willing to die on her ice.

In the lottery-winning fantasy version of my life, I buy my mom and dad a home somewhere warm. It could still happen, but generous feelings don’t constitute a plan, so instead I badger them to spend their own money to move south. I suppose if I were serious about helping them I shouldn’t have bailed out of the corporate world at the peak of my prime earning years. No one ever said becoming an artist makes business sense, but I had to make a go of it. Time will tell if that was ultimately smart or totally selfish. I haven’t a clue yet.

In the meantime, I try to find a comfortable position on my sofa, but as it turns out, there is no comfort in sitting, standing, lying down, or any combination thereof. A bruised ass is just going to hurt. A lot. So consider this another learn-from-my-mistakes installment. A topic I seem to return to often. And just so you know, 25 mg of Tramadol - or half one of those little doggie pills - taken 4 times a day should mask a fair amount of pain (thank you internet). You’ll still feel sore, but you won’t care so much. That’s the best I’ve got for a takeaway.

Be careful. It’s brutal out there.

Face First

As if we hadn’t been warned. As if we couldn’t just feel the party winding down. As if we couldn’t have guessed what a fifty degree drop in temperature might mean, still we got caught wearing thin outerwear, and large numbers of us crashed our cars on black ice coming home from work. All of us plunging face-first into winter.

Like most mornings of big change, this one was indistinct - without markers or warnings that most of us could read. I sat jacket-less on my second floor porch, letting the sun beat down on my head, hoping to coax my brain into the demands of day. I looked north, across a row of orderly rooftops, beyond the middle school parking lot, past the Tires Plus and the Home Depot, way up to the horizon, where a solid wall of arctic clouds had assembled itself on the northern plains. The top side of the cloud bank looked benign, if not festive, with whisps of white tossed up against bright blue. But the side facing us, the advancing front, was blurry gray and troubled. I guessed this was the thing the late night weather lady had been hyping for days. I pictured her in a little inset box in my sky, urgent red dress and printed scarves, gesturing broadly with little fingertip flourishes at the end of each sweep, like serifs.

Within the hour trash cans began tumbling up and down the alley. Lawn furniture slammed into privacy fences and cushions were sent flying into neighbor’s yards. The wind chimes on my front porch thrashed against the side of the house so vigorously that by the time I went out to investigate they had already chipped dozens of little gouges out of the siding. So winter is here, I thought.

Like anyone caught unprepared, my first responses were haphazard. I made a quick inventory of the garden plants still producing fruit. A handful of too-slow tomatoes, some pinkish raspberries, and a ground-cherry bush. Each had failed to get the memo that summer was over. I deemed each plant healthy enough to protect, and suddenly found myself spreading plastic sheeting over them, complicit in their folly, as if the sustained sub-freezing temperatures could be endured. As if the door to our protracted Indian summer could swing open again in a few days.

The weather lady insists we will lose another twenty degrees by tomorrow night. “A 70 degree drop in 72 hours,” she gleefully proclaims. And just like that my sudden reality-check goes completely surreal, so I poke around for some corroborating perspective. An App I use for mountaineering informs me that the current temperature on top of 14,443’ Mount Elbert, Colorado’s highest peak, is several degrees warmer than Denver, where I live. Then I check in on Barrow, Alaska, the northern-most city in America, on the shores of the Arctic ocean. Their current temperature is also several degrees warmer than where I live. So that pretty much settles it. Time to “winterize.”

The seasonal adjustments we are suddenly forced to make seem ill-timed and ugly, but all of that work is mundane and soon forgotten. We’ll move the long-johns up into the underwear drawer. The tire-pressure warning light will come on in our cars. We’ll change the furnace filter. None of these things are worth mentioning, save that they occasion the ancient and natural inward-turning of the human psyche. We are bio-chemical creatures, after all, mammals that respond physically and emotionally to the shorter days. We are driven indoors where we must create our own warmth. We invent rituals to commemorate our harvests, these passages from light to dark. Whether it’s Christmas or Festivus or just a Black Friday spending splurge, we seek - in terms both sacred and profane - to cope with the demands of a season of darkness.

The rose blooming by my front steps seems perfectly untouched by the deep freeze. I take my glove off to touch the flower, expecting that velvety, slightly waxy feel of the petals. Instead the flower breaks off and disassembles as it falls. The petals sound like potato chips tumbling down through the branches.

The conceit bubbling up in this meditation is that, at least here in Colorado, the sun is always about to pop out. Even after we dive down to a new record low temperature tomorrow night, the clouds will lift and reveal enough snow on the peaks to begin fueling the endless sporty diversions we need to get through our comparatively sunny winter. That’s just how it’ll be. It’s not that the winters here are easy, but they are maybe a little more purposeful - or we make them so, at least. As for me, those frozen flower petals are already in my freezer, like the others I picked over the summer. I’ll use them in a spiced wine I’ll be starting any day. Should be drinkable by next summer. In this way I can round off the corners between the seasons, carrying the fruits and labor of one season into the next, trying as I do every year, to make winter a useful time. To swallow it, rather than let it swallow me.

Limping Home

I wasn’t expecting the blur of fur and bared teeth that flashed past the corner of my eye.
I wasn’t expecting to be struggling in the wet grass to wedge myself between an aggressive hundred pound Malamute and the dog it had attacked - my dog, Roscoe. I knew about my neighbor’s dog. Sweet as sugar to humans, but a holy terror to other dogs, which is why she’s normally kept indoors or behind a 6 foot fence. Normally. Today was different. Someone left the door ajar and the Malamute seized her chance to put an end to my dog once and for all.

I’d seen this dog attack another dog, unprovoked, and knew her to be ferocious. Before I could think to react, Roscoe was pinned by his neck on the ground and I could sense the neighbor dog meant to kill him. What happened next was all gnashing and squealing and fur flying and me somehow in the middle of it with my hands around the Malamute’s neck. I squeezed hard. Harder. God damn you, God damn you! was all I could think to say as the dog finally capitulated and Roscoe limped off. A trail of blood marked his path up the sidewalk to a hedge near our house where he disappeared from view.

The sun was too bright. My head began to pound as I lay in the soggy lawn of our courtyard, still holding the Malamute by his mane. The dog’s owner, Sarah was suddenly standing over me frantically wondering how to help. She was dressed for work and looked lovely, completely at odds with the setting. I relinquished her marauding pet and she tugged it back into her yard. A jittery electric halo danced around them - the kind I see just before getting a full-on migraine. Really? I thought, This has to happen now? And why not, nothing was making any sense. One moment I’m walking my dogs and the next I’m laying on the ground with a torn shirt, bite marks on my arms, and a seriously injured dog bleeding under a bush. Why not top the whole event off with a migraine?

Roscoe looked warily out from his leafy refuge. He licked his lips and flattened his ears back as if he’d done something wrong, as if he had disappointed me. Most of the blood that I could see was oozing from puncture wounds in his left foot. He’s a pretty furry guy, and I wasn’t confident that my quick once-over had cataloged all his wounds, so I coaxed him into the car and headed to our vet. Halfway there, I realized I hadn’t called to let them know we were coming. At a traffic light I pulled up the Urban Vet Care number on my phone. My thumb shook wildly as I pressed the call button. I hadn’t yet seriously regarded the puncture wounds I’d taken in my right bicep. The rip in my shirt sleeve made a little window where I could peek at the damage. It was dark purple and brown, and it stung the way a cut does when it’s really dirty. I couldn’t remember the last time I had a tetanus shot.

When the pleasant voice on the phone asked how she could help me, I informed her that I was bringing an injured dog. This was not a request, it was a statement of fact. We’ll be there in fifteen minutes, I said. You can get away with this sort of behavior when you’ve spent over 8K in vet bills within a single year. Two knee-rebuilds on one dog, a tumor removal from a second dog, and dental surgery for a cat will grant you this sort of access if you don't abuse it. The pleasant voice cleared her throat and said, Yes mister Howell, we’ll see you in fifteen minutes.

Roscoe was whisked away by a familiar vet tech for an initial assessment of his injuries. I brushed off the grass still clinging to my wet knees and puzzled about the Malamute. I remembered screaming Why are you doing this? What’s wrong with you? as if it could answer in a way that I would understand. But those weren't real questions anyway - just padding in between my curses. Still, I'd like to know how a pet can suddenly become so profoundly unhinged. It’s hard to imagine how far off the mark we can be in understanding our closest non-human companions. Sure, we know not to anthropomorphize, and we’re reluctantly aware of the more disagreeable aspects of the Circle of Life, like animals disemboweling each other for sustenance. But it’s extra troubling when one neighbor’s dog turns murderous against another, because we assume that these creatures share a rudimentary behavioral code with us. They are pack animals, after all. They know social structure and obligation. We’ve “trained” our dogs to obey. How can we get them so wrong? Likewise, how have we managed to map our own genome and even glimpsed the edges of the universe without turning that same rigorous wonder upon our oldest evolutionary partners? After thirty thousand years of comradeship you'd think we'd have more to show for our  efforts than "sit, stay, rollover" and "shake."

Roscoe came home seven hours later, sedated, with big patches of fur shaved off to expose the multiple wounds I suspected were hiding under his thick coat. There was a gash above his right ear, a bite mark to the skull just behind his left eye, and a ragged gouge on his butt. The most serious damage was the bite to his left rear foot, which was torn open with an exposed tendon. Adding insult to injury, a tooth had come loose in the struggle and needed extraction. Roscoe looked like hell. It had been clear to me, in the moment, that the neighbor dog intended to kill him. The evidence now seemed to agree. The attack lasted no more than twenty seconds before I got them apart. I shiver to think what a few more seconds may have cost my dog.

If you’ve got a pet nearby, and it’s not sound asleep, do this quick experiment. Go look it in the eyes. What’s the very first thing you notice? A welcoming recognition. Then maybe a quickening of curiosity. Just by doing this you’ve started a little trans-species conversation. Each of you must interpret the others reactions. Your pet’s look may say, What do you want from me? What are we going to do? It’s up to you how you answer, but don’t suppose this conversation is driven by instinct or intuition alone. Your pet is working hard to understand you. The average dog can understand 165 words. How many words a cat can learn is more of a mystery. Cats don’t test well (which seems to suit their purposes). Even without words, we animals study each other for intent, and build bridges across the formidable barriers between our species. Even my dogs do this with the cat. The fact that these encounters result not just in cooperation but affection, loyalty and even empathy, is one of nature’s divine miracles, easy to overlook because it is so small and commonplace.

There are times - particularly when my dogs and I are doing the same activity, like playing or running or relaxing on the floor - when I can look in their eyes and suppose I know just what they are thinking. Other times those same eyes surrender no clues. Our animals may have joined us around the campfire, so to speak, but their home is deep, deep in the forest. The domesticated pet straddles two worlds. That’s easy to forget with an animal curled beside you. Our pets stumble awkwardly between the social geographies of the animal kingdom and the hyper-demanding structures of human civilization. It’s no wonder that once in a while a dog gets its signals crossed.

I walked the vet's bill over to Sarah’s house. She was expecting it. Her ten year old daughter opened the door, accompanied by the Malamute. The dog was easily twice the girl’s mass, but she had no trouble controlling it. The girl walked the paperwork into the kitchen, leaving me briefly in the entryway with the dog, who began compulsively licking my hands and nuzzling against me. I knew better than to suppose this submissive display was some sort of doggy apology, but clearly the dog wanted my approval. I relented. I felt all through her fur but could find no wounds. It seemed Roscoe hadn’t gotten in a single lick. It was hard to imagine only hours ago I had my hands around this dog’s neck, squeezing with all my might. I would have killed you, I said quietly.

The girl returned just then. I’m sorry my dog is so stupid. My mom is going to get her more behavior training, She said. Yes, "more" would be good, I said.

Later, on our truncated limp around the neighborhood, Roscoe insisted on passing the neighbor’s house by veering way out in the street instead of sticking to the sidewalk. I indulged him. We’d have time to work on being brave in days to come. I thought back to the time when Roscoe alerted me to a rattlesnake coiled ahead of us on a trail we were hiking. He froze with alarm and curiosity as we waited for the snake to move off into the brush. I'm sure he doesn't think he saved my life, but I do. Likewise, I have no idea whether he feels like I averted his demise today. He does not appear to be haunted by constant self-reflection. It's of no concern to him. The obligation we have to each other doesn't have to be discussed or analyzed. Looking out for each other isn't just part of the deal, it IS the deal. I reached down to pet him, my hand zig-zagging between the wounds on his head, like a car weaving cautiously through a construction zone. We’ll get through this together, buddy, I said, It's what we do.

A hike on the Divide (Confessions from an over-curated life)

It's all about the angle. This isn't as dicey as it looks.
Even my dogs made it to the summit of Mount Yale.

I am not the alpinist I want you to think I am. I am not as well-traveled, adventurous, or skilled in the arts of outdoorsmanship as I seem either. I never made eagle scout, and don’t know how to snare, skin, or roast a rabbit over an open fire. If you dropped me off in the woods with nothing but a knife I would pass out within a few hours from inability to maintain proper blood sugar levels. Helicopters would be looking for me in the morning.

Uncompahgre Peak, 14,321' Another walk-up with
a non-technical approach. Also done with dogs.

Don’t get me wrong, I know a thing or two about staying out of trouble in the wild. I can use a map and compass when the trails give out. I watch the clouds on the horizon. I bring more food and water than I think I’ll need. I put my phone in Airplane mode so it doesn’t roam the battery to death looking for a signal. I can start a fire without matches (by using a lighter). But none of this amounts to specialized knowledge. I am, by any definition, an amateur. An ardent and experienced one, but an amateur nonetheless. The perpetual stream of photos I post on Facebook of me on mountain tops and in other carefully cropped natural wonders results from a concerted effort to craft an image of myself that is more outdoorsy than I can ever live up to. I admit this without shame since I’m in such excellent company when it comes to the over-curated self-image. Like most everyone on social media, I am simply letting you know what what my passions are, and I’m trying to persuade you to share them. Also I’d happy if you thought I was just a tiny bit badass.

The relentless yet casual-seeming effort we put into the creation and maintenance of our virtual personas is something most folks don’t want to admit doing, yet we can all spot the behavior among our friends. Sure, not everyone bothers to be that fussy with their online appearance, and some are altogether careless about what they post, but even that becomes an expression of how they want to be perceived. Most of us seem happy with a slightly hyperbolic version of ourselves where we are more mindful or funny or politically engaged or skilled at spontaneously whipping up an amazing-looking meal from food we just happened to grow in our organic gardens. All of our passions and proclivities are in high relief, enthusiastically courting affirmation. We don’t just love science anymore, we F***ing Love Science.

All of this is good fun, but it’s helpful to recognize the gap between our constructed selves and the raw, un-enhanced, unplanned and often uninteresting version that is closer to who we likely are. Who hasn’t had the unexpected letdown of bumping into a good Facebook friend in the grocery store only to have an awkward conversation that made you question how well you really know each other. “Well, see you on Facebook,” we’d say in parting. And truly, we’ll be relieved to get back into that formatted social setting where the choreography of interaction is more familiar and witty.

Similarly, though we ought to know ourselves better, the gap between our public and private selves can be disappointingly wide. This morning I took a hike up in the mountains, and found myself spending much of the time in that gap.

When I hike alone I find the barrier between my thought-life and the world outside me to be surprisingly permeable. Those fancy Harvard-educated transcendentalist poets of the nineteenth century had a lot to say about the merging of the self with the natural world. Guys like Emerson and Thoreau spent a lot of time wandering around the New England countryside by themselves trying to define an authentic spirituality that was rooted in both nature and human individuality. Their efforts were in stark reaction to the industrial revolution and the turmoil it caused as American society reorganized itself around practices of efficiency, top-down organizational structure, mass production, and a life indoors. In that ethos, nature was primarily regarded as a resource to be exploited without regulation. Perhaps the words of those writers wouldn’t seem so romantic and effete today if we weren’t still largely under the spell of growth and efficiency as it was defined two hundred years ago. Nevertheless, even today, time spent utterly alone in nature - particularly on top of a mountain - will open you up to ideas of about “the sublime” whether you’re much into the topic or not. It just happens. And even if you aren’t exactly spiritual, you may find yourself having a numinous experience. If so, just go with it. You can decide what you believe about it later. 

Those are the kind of things I think about when I’m alone in nature. Sometimes. But this morning as I ascended the trail to the Continental Divide above Berthoud Pass in Colorado, I was really thinking about my body and how much it hurt. The trail is rated “easy,” but in Colorado that just means you don’t have to use your hands to help you climb. As the trees gave way to tundra, I could really feel the effects of my relative un-fitness, and the unwelcome heft of my over-wintered frame. I took a quick inventory of the specialized aches and pains my middle-aged anatomy had accumulated. Nothing new to speak of, thankfully. The sharp tightness in my lungs was because I wasn’t yet accustomed to the thin air. I would get there, as I had done in past seasons, but not on the first day. I reminded myself that this was a training hike, and that meant a little discomfort. But the secret pleasure of this particular workout, I knew from past visits, is that after about an hour of steady ascent you top out on the Divide and for hundreds of miles to the north and south it’s pure Sound of Music heavenliness, and relatively easy going. At that point I can forget about my body for a little while.

The final pitch just below the Divide is a steep one. The trail zigizags sharply up the last couple hundred vertical feet through blankets of tiny arctic wildflowers. On the trail above me I heard voices and looked up in time to see two guys and a dog disappear onto the ridge. Later, I met up with them sheltered on the lee side of a rock outcropping enjoying a fairly elaborate meal. They had real home-cooked breakfast items spread out in front of them in various Tupperware and tinfoil arrangements and were as relaxed as anyone I’ve ever seen on top of a mountain. I wasn’t completely surprised by the food. I’d seen it before. I once climbed a fourteener with a friend who pulled half a rotisserie chicken from her backpack when we reached the peak. Why make yourself miserable with energy bars and trail mix? If you’re going to do all that work to get to the summit, you might as well reward yourself right then and there.

Two guys and a dog

The guys had their mouths full but they waved me over. We greeted one another with the enthusiastic and congratulatory pleasantries that strangers exchange when their paths converge on top of the world. This trail sees dozens of hikers on any summer Sunday, but right now we were the only three souls for thousands of vertical feet and dozens of miles in any direction - a heady realization we were happy to relish. After a few moments I left them to their peace and pressed on toward a high saddle about a mile to the south where I figured I’d have a solo brunch of my own.

A little ways from the spot I’d chosen to take a break, I began to feel light-headed and depleted of energy. These are generally not good signs, especially at altitude, so I quickly ducked down off the ridge to get out of the wind and set to work getting my body chemistry back on track. I found myself spreading out my remaining food like those guys had done, but mine didn’t look like a sumptuous brunch. Just a bag of jerky, a little box of chocolate milk, an individually wrapped string cheese, and a small bag of dry dogfood left over from a hike I did last week - with dogs. I shifted some rocks to get more comfortable and poked a straw into my milk box.  I stretched my legs out onto the edge of an immense snow cornice still clinging to the lip of an ancient glacial cirque. The view before me was mind-bendingly beautiful. If I leaned way out I could see an arrangement of little ponds hundreds of feet below where the melt-water collected. A blanket of mixed conifers fanned out below the ponds and darkened the valley beyond. In the distance I could see a hairpin turn on the highway I came up, a bright ribbon of asphalt cleaving open the wilderness. I felt lucky. It took some effort, but I was doing something I love.

Brunch with a view

I’ve always been suspicious of the “Do What You Love” (DWYL) messages that seem to cycle through social media every couple of weeks in the form of inspirational jpgs. The sentiment often masks elitist assumptions about access and privilege. If we all get to do what we love, who will clean the toilets? Shouldn’t there be corresponding value for the jobs that are necessary but ugly, boring or dangerous? Furthermore, I feel like DWYL needs a big fat asterisk that adds the clause “but ONLY do it because you love it, not because you expect it to earn you a decent living, since it probably won’t.” Don’t get me wrong, I’m all for combining your passion and your career, but you better have a solid plan B for when becoming the next Steve Jobs doesn’t work out. DWYL are great words to live by if you can manage to de-couple them from a personalized capitalist agenda. Using financial success to validate effort spent on one’s passion is a precarious and misleading system of reward. Lean on your passion too hard for financial gain and it may collapse under the weight of your expectations, and become just another unlovable thing in your life.

I sat there for a while and let the nutrients work their way into my blood and soak into my muscles. My goal, Stanley Mountain, was about a half hour further to the south. I still had time to “bag” it before I’d need to head back to treeline and beat the afternoon storms. But hadn’t I changed my goal twice already on this hike? At first I told myself I’d be happy to reach the Divide. When that proved easier than expected I chose this group of rocks. And now I was considering Stanley? What narrative was I trying to create and for whom? No one was here. No one knew I was even doing this. I already had all the photos I’d need to make a satisfactory status update on Facebook. I thought about the breakfast the two strangers were enjoying a ways back. Wasn’t that a solidly respectable goal? I decided it would be mine as well, and I used my remaining time to enjoy my uninspiring food as best I could, and just sit there and practice being still and quiet.

A lot of folks are happy to repeat the popular mantra “The journey is the destination” as some sort of affirmation about how they want to live. Lying back on top of that cliff I was convinced that for me, at that moment, I would benefit more from staying put than either journey or destination could offer. So I did. And as usually happens under such conditions, I was overcome with awe at my surroundings and my good fortune to be there. Every time I try to describe this effect I sound like a like a pot head. I used to say it felt like the top of my skull had come unhinged and raw beauty was being poured directly onto my brain, or like my head was a funnel open to the sky and some sort of divine blessing was flowing down into me. Flaky, like I said, but plenty of better writers than me have tried to describe it, only to veer off into some idiosyncratic mysticism of their own creation. What I know for sure is that access to this experience is rooted in the letting go of ego (easier to do when you are completely alone) and being receptive to a beauty so present it seems to almost have dimension and mass. Yet in much the same way that smoke or clouds can imitate solid shapes, it is fleeting and incomprehensible. I can never decide whether this experience is fundamentally aesthetic or spiritual or just some sort of physical rush from all the negative ions up there. There’s no reason to think it isn’t all three, wrapped up together like some sort of gift package, because more than anything it feels like a gift. Whatever it is, I’m always thankful for it and vow to try and bring a remnant of it back with me, somehow.

Back down at the parking lot, I sat in my car with the doors open and checked the photos on my smart phone. The selfies all sucked, as usual, but I had a handful of interesting shots that hinted at the experiences I had up on the roof of America. Just then my phone’s battery ran out and the screen went black. Whatever magic was trapped in my camera’s memory, if any, would have to wait until I got home to recover it. I sat there for a minute considering whether there was maybe a story I could fashion from my day. Probably not. Nothing actually happened, except for some guys eating eggs and waffles up on the Divide. Yet just that act of wondering triggered a process, both creative and destructive, as I set to work trimming away non-essential details from the narrative framework of my day. Maybe there was something there, maybe not. Already I was editing my own memory. This is just how it goes if you want stories.

I started the car and coasted most of the 78 miles back to my home, back to the part of my day that I traded in return for a little DWYL time. From here on out the afternoon would be ordinary, un-photogenic and even a little boring. I was perfectly okay with that. I had done something I loved and asked nothing more from it. For the time being at least, there was nothing more to want, except maybe to hear that pleasant little Facebook chime when people comment on my photos. There’s always that to look forward to.

Stanley Mountain, 12,521'

Natural Selection

The Judgement of Paris, Anton Raphael Mengs

“Please make sure to mute your phones, or turn them off altogether. They can be incredibly distracting to the presenters.”

We shouldn’t have needed to be reminded of this. We were all adults. All professionals. I looked around the conference room as the others fumbled their devices into the mute mode. Most of us positioned our phones close by, angled in such a way that we could steal little glances at them, to monitor the flow of "messaging” that demands our near-constant attention - none of it remotely related to the reason we were gathered together in this all-purpose meeting room.

So here we were finally, landscape architects, park planners, local government representatives, arts organizers and administrators, a handful of designated citizen-advisors, and me, the one artist on the panel. We were assembled for the purpose of reviewing final proposals for a public art installation in one of Denver’s neighborhood parks. This was the culmination of a five month selection process. By the end our meeting we would recommend one of three artist-finalists for a project that boasted a budget well into the six figures. It was heady business, at least for me, and I was thrilled to be on this selection committee. When I was asked to join this panel, I was given a packet detailing the qualifying guidelines for the various positions. Among other things, the description for “Artist” said the panelist should have strong peer-recognition. I know it’s a cheap thrill to let yourself feel like a so-and-so over something like this, but given that the practice of being an artist involves long hermetic stretches of self-doubt and no feedback whatsoever, to suddenly have a piece of paper in front of you that confirms your status among peers, well, it felt good. It just did.

A few minutes into one of the presentations my iPhone screen blinked on and I squinted down at it without moving my head, so as not to distract the speaker. I read the first line of an incoming email that began, “Dear applicant, we regret to inform you that your artwork was not chosen…” The message was from an art publication I’ve been submitting to every year for the past seven years. I’ve never gotten in. Each year the juror changes, as does the work I submit, yet after seven tries I still can’t seem to match my work to the juror. I have no idea how close I’ve come, whether I’ve been eliminated in the first round by a grad school intern, or whether some fancy curator agonized over my exclusion in the final moments. The process of jurying is necessarily opaque.

I reached out and powered off my screen. Prickly heat ran up the back of my neck as I felt a quick flush of humiliation. A dark pit opened up and beckoned me inside, but I’ve had plenty of practice avoiding that pit, so I took three deep breaths and returned my attention to the meeting. Total elapsed time of my crushing “fail” was about 45 seconds. I doubt anyone noticed my mini-crisis. Other rejections have hurt more. This one I’m getting used to.

The presenter in front of the room was struggling with momentum. His proposal was likable, but wasn’t blowing anyone away, and you could feel it. This was his big moment and he wasn’t selling us. I felt a pang of guilt for harboring a vote that would not go in his favor. He was probably the nicest of the presenters we saw that day, and I pictured myself having a beer with him. His work was solid, but it didn’t generate the right kind of excitement among the twelve people in the room. And so it was that nearly half a year after the process began, a process which saw nearly 200 qualified applicants narrowed down to this final three, this artist would be eliminated in the last few minutes of our final meeting.

Rejection isn’t a thing. Or it doesn’t need to be. This is what I told myself the other day as I juried an open-call show at a local gallery. The idea I was trying out was that I would select the work that I found strongly compelling, rather than singling out things to reject. That was my intention anyway. And while the net effect would be the same either way, I wanted to curate from a perspective of positivity. Probably I did this because I knew feelings were going to be hurt, and I wanted an out. These are the sorts of ethical gymnastics you practice when you are the one doing the exclusion. This is why rejection letters, like the one I deleted the other day without reading, always take a passive stance. Most say something like “regretfully, your art wasn’t included” rather than “regretfully, your art was excluded.” This is all they can do to soften the news.

For my part, I wanted to be as blind to bias as possible in my selection process. I went out of my way not to see the names of the applicants. But there is nothing you can do when the work is well known to you, except to try to adhere strictly to an aesthetic or thematic framework. Curating a themed exhibit isn’t simply about picking what you like, it’s about building a cohesive story of some sort. That was the challenge I was excited about, anyway. Naively, I figured I could pull it off and somehow avoid any ugly emotional fallout from my choices. This error was unpleasantly clear to me as I held a small artwork in my hands and regarded it closely, knowing it was done by a friend, and that it wasn’t right for this show.

Expulsion from Eden, Michelangelo

According to evolutionary psychologists, the intense feelings that accompany rejection are useful for our survival. In the days of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, the thinking goes, rejection was akin to a death sentence, since to be ostracized from the tribe meant we would have to fend for ourselves in the wild. Interestingly, it is also known that the pain of rejection activates the same neurological areas in the brain that are associated with physical pain, therefore: “Evolutionary psychologists assume the brain developed an early warning system to alert us when we were at risk for ostracism. Because it was so important to get our attention—those who experienced rejection as more painful (i.e., because rejection mimicked physical pain in their brain) gained an evolutionary advantage—they were more likely to correct their behavior and consequently, more likely to remain in the tribe." citation

Some of my creative friends and colleagues flat out refuse to jury local art shows. For them, there is too much potential for wounded friendships and ill-will as a result. I know one Denver gallery owner who still gets creepy emails from a guy whose work he rejected more than five years ago. And as for the applicants, juried shows threaten the possibility of soul-crushing self doubt. Even the toughest of us have survived the initial shock of non-inclusion, only to be thrown into a tailspin later when we see the artwork that was selected. Most of my artist friends who are well established in their careers pooh-pooh the very thought of entering work into a juried show. Why subject yourself to the whims of someone you don’t fully respect, who has nowhere near your level of experience, or whose gallery isn’t critically regarded? And yet these same artists routinely risk exclusion by applying for fellowships, residencies, or public art commissions. It seems that no matter what level of success we achieve, we continually subject ourselves to the possibility that someone whose favor we seek will simply give us a big thumbs down.

So if rejection is so bad for us, in terms of the survival of our species, then why do we engage it so regularly? From that person you'd like to mate with who rebuffs your best attempt at charm to the roomful of muckety-mucks at your job who give a collective “meh” to your best thinking, each of us exposes ourselves to negation fairly frequently. There’s no avoiding it if you want to achieve a level of self-respect, not to mention success. No risk, no reward, as the saying goes.

As for juried shows, I’ll continue to accept invitations to curate. I’m trying to get better at it, and I’m convinced that the local art scene can benefit from more thoughtful, rigorous and challenging exhibitions that are self-produced. Juried shows are also a good venue to showcase emerging talent and can help those artists establish an exhibition record. I can’t think of a better way to get traction in an art community that relies so heavily on DIY methods for career growth.

And the art publication I keep failing to impress? I’m already working on a new body of work I intend to finish in time for next year’s entry deadline. Eighth time’s the charm. Don’t they say that somewhere? China, maybe? In any case, should I find my work vetoed yet again, I already have a plan. Take three deep breaths. Slowly, and as deep as I can make them.