Author: Becky

Good times

Jim is here for a few days, always a good time, no matter what we do. He flew in to Houston in the middle of a mighty impressive thunderstorm with flash flooding. So dramatic.

Last night the four of us went to our favorite Montrose restaurant, Barnaby’s, then we watched the first two Toy Story movies on DVD in preparation for seeing Toy Story 3 in the theater. I think only Tom had seen the first movie years ago; the rest of us were Toy Story virgins. Many thumbs and some paws up (Pixie may think Pixar is another name for her own brand of magic).

I’m not sure what else is on the agenda, but it’ll be something, because when Jim visits, we always have an agenda. Maybe I’ll sneak in some Timothy James Beck conversation.

I finished the Work of Art project mentioned in my last post. Here’s a photo, and if you want the long explanation and more shots, check out the Work of Art blog. You can also see contributions from other artists, including one from TJB writing partner Timmy!

Getting in touch with your young inner artist

When I was ten, we lived in South Carolina. Someone or some organization decided to put together an art exhibit in an empty house at or near the college where my father taught. Anyone could submit works, and I decided to paint something while watching my father go through his paintings to pick out one or more to show. I don’t remember if anyone else in my family contributed anything.

I always loved it when my father painted. Oil was his favorite medium, although he also used watercolors, inks, and pencil. I liked the wooden box that held his supplies and his wooden palette. I liked the smell of the oil paints, turpentine, linseed oil, and mineral spirits. During the time I was making my “work of art,” he was painting on these pressed wood panels salvaged from the back of a bookcase:

Easy to see whose technique influenced what I paint today, although I judge his work far superior to mine for many reasons. And at ten, I was much more literal. Here’s my painting that hung in the show (my mother, bless her, kept it framed and packed away all those years or I wouldn’t even remember it):

Please click here for work of staggering genius.

Something from the garden

This is one of the plants that appears every year on The Compound without any assistance from us. There used to be a bunch of them in the bed where the herbs are now. This past winter wiped them out. So I was happily surprised to see this one come up in a different flower bed. When you rub the leaves, they have a pungent odor, but the flowers have a sweeter scent.

Clerodendrum bungei, or Cashmere Bouquet.
They get much fatter and fuller. Hopefully by next summer we’ll again have a larger population of them.

ETA: Until Mark G. Harris pointed it out, I never noticed the lizard in the flower. When I shot it and even uploaded and cropped it, I was completely focused on the flower. Now I can’t STOP seeing him. The lizard is a photo bomber!

You can make your dreams come true

‘Nathan just tweeted the following:

NathanBurgoine Life goal update: have signing at @murderbooks

‘Nathan, I believe this will happen. And I can tell you from experience that Murder By the Book is a great place to have a book signing because the store, the staff, and its readers are the best.

Meanwhile, I have a photo that may remind you of Houston’s best little mystery bookstore:

And now, a word from a favorite author

I couldn’t have expressed it better than one of my favorite writers Tom Robbins did in an interview from 2000:

…you’ve traveled quite a bit.

I do travel. You have to keep moving otherwise you’re a target.

That’s cynical.

Cheerfully cynical. My view of the world is not that different from Kafka’s, really. The difference is that Kafka let it make him miserable and I refuse. Life is too short. My personal motto has always been: Joy in spite of everything. Not just [mindless] joy, but joy in spite of everything. Recognizing the inequities and the suffering and the corruption and all that but refusing to let it rain on my parade. And I advocate this to other people.