There was a moment
that I raised my head
to yours,
an uncommon
instant
for shy girls.
It was a meeting
of hearts —
one strong.
one reticent.
But your smile was a steadying hand
that reached across divides
of country, persuasion, tomorrows, or names,
and steadied me.
One heart steadying another.
Fleetingly —
and ever present.
© Pamela Pardue Goode
Hello Lovelies!
Today I’m posting a few of the mosaics I’ve created over the past gazillion years. What a joy it’s been! I’ve taken a break lately due to wrist issues, but I’m slowly making my way back in and loving it. The new pieces will be smaller (grumble), but they’ll still be a joy. They range in size from 8 x 8 inches to about 14 x 20.
Who has a favorite?
When I first made this trip 20+ years ago, we traveled across the Pan Am Highway, her roads broken into car-sized holes that slowed the journey considerably. It didn’t bother me an ounce, because travel teaches us truth. And during every visit since, I’ve watched Costa Rica blossom in so very many beautiful directions. I pray it will always be so.
And now, once again, we’re here! First, we’ll enjoy a beautiful three-hour journey through the countryside. Along the way, we’ll pass small houses with colorful laundry hanging, stalls selling creches and life-size deer figures, and vast fields of sugar cane. The backlit fronds of the cane will compete for our attention with their feathery tufts.
The roads are hilly and winding, with lushly planted homegrown guardrails of Dracena protecting against the steepest drops. Fortunately, traffic is mild. A small white dog trots up the road; a hilltop palm missing most of its fronds arcs leeward in the mist. I spy a rounded tree literally covered with white birds — at least 50 of them — and again, I wonder.
Halfway through the drive, we stop for coffee and the skies open wide for the twenty minute afternoon rain. When we pile back into the van, mist has settled onto the hairpin turns taking us down the mountain, but not enough to obscure the drive of banana, coffee, bougainvillea, citrus trees, dracena, palms, unfamiliar tropical fauna with giant leaves in every shape, blooming brush, and one surprising stand of three-needled pines.
Bridges become more frequent as we cross rocky streams and rivers, each path only one-laned, making a gentle dance of transport vans and the occasional bus or truck. Most of the locals walk, wisely against the traffic but still along the road with neither sidewalk nor shoulder for safety. Small signs advertise local businesses: “Many Meaty Dishes. All Meatless. All Tasty.” The rafters of a porch along the roadside support 20 bunches of bananas hanging by ropes. We pass through several small towns, and as the 5:00 sunset moves in, the people double in number — there is so much walking through the nightfall, and I hope hard that each arrives home safely.
We reach Finca Luna Nueva at what seems like 10 or 11 PM, though it is actually closer to 6:00, and we ascend the gravel just as moonstain moves in, spreading her welcome across the sky.
The lovely ladies of the lodge feed us well — offering chicken with saffron rice, soup, organic spinach, juices and salad from the farm, and I’m fast asleep before 9:00, tucked away in my little cabin with Costa Rican breezes blowing through.
I pray it will always be so.
P.S. Twenty years of visiting Costa Rica regularly, and I’ve never, ever tired of it. Bring it on in January 2024!
If I were a Baobab,
I’d be raucous and loud, and filled with song.
My veins would be rivers blue, and deep enough
to water the world.
My heart would be an all-hours reservoir;
my lungs exhaling oxygen and
life
in joyous bursts;
my arms
aflame with love.
And I think …
that yes, I can be this Baobab.
Mosaic Art and Poetry by Pam Goode
27″H x 21″W
I wasn’t a huge September fan until I became a hardcore beach girl. As children, we always headed out smack in the middle of the heat and loved every minute. Of course now July summers are hotter than hades and a bit less attractive. I might still be willing to go … my mom did it … but I don’t. Instead I dig my toes into sweet September sand and let the softer sun have at me. She loves me, and boy do I love her.
And here’s a secret about September — the beach is almost completely empty. And that is surefire motivation.
The best fun is hanging out with our gaggle of girls, a stash of every kind of art supply, and burying ourselves in all-day creativity (and sometimes all night), conversation, and laughter each week.
And so we come, and we cook, and we eat, and we create, and we walk the empty beach and smile at the wiggly periwinkles trying to dig back into the sand after being disrupted by a wave, and ogle the starfish. But mostly, we laugh. Indeed laughter is so very good for the soul, but it’s also so much more than that — it’s healing and renewal.
Photo: My Mom and Dad on the beach when I was just a tiny thing.
A young man came into the gallery one day and, like many, stood with his mouth agape staring at the art on the walls. “What is this?” he asked. “It’s a mosaic,” I answered with a smile. “Well, how do you make it? Where do you get all these little pieces of glass?” “We cut them,” I said with a little glow.” “Cut them? You mean you have to cut every one of these pieces?” “Yes,” I said. “Every piece.” “Oh man,” he said,” he said. “Why would anyone do this? There’s got to be a way to streamline this process. Somebody needs to sell the glass already cut. Doesn’t anyone sell pre-cut glass?” “Well, possibly,” I said, ‘but then I wouldn’t be interested.”
And there you have the answer in a nutshell. I make art because it’s hard.
During the classes I teach, new students will often take on a familiar stricken look when they first start cutting. I tell them to relax and cut for the pleasure of exploration — that making mosaics means learning to love the process. And the process is hard.
Some might say I like a hard life in general. I’m a good one for trudging through the minutiae of a situation, considering every possibility, and then selecting the most time- and soul-consuming avenue. To me, this simply equates to actually living my life rather than just going through the motions. It’s the same way with cooking, planning, selecting (and decorating) a Christmas tree, traveling, thinking, loving, and art. Either I do it to the max, or I don’t do it at all. Otherwise, what have I gained? What have I given?
One of my favorite quotes is from the movie “A League of Their Own,” when Gina Davis admits that something is hard. Tom Hanks says “Of course it’s hard. If it was easy, everyone would do it. The Hard is what makes it Good.”
He’s so right.
It’s a funny thing about “easy.” There are many things I do because they’re “easy” for me, like sorting or folding laundry or unloading the dishwasher or writing a press release — I can have them done in the time it takes to think “oh — I should do this.” Accomplishment is a powerful feed-good, and we can rack up way more of the easies than the hards. But does that make them good? Well, no. None of my easies will ever make it to my Very Favorite Things list.
But give me something hard: determining and creating the ideal ratio of perfect cuts to “human touch” in art, cooking the (very) occasional meal that takes alllllll day, raising a child, or growing the balls to be my fullest self, and I’m all over it.
So yeah. I love mosaic because it’s damn hard. I think we all need to love and engage in something that tests us, that pushes us flat up against the wall and says, “Do your best. Now.”
It’s my favorite part of life.
We all have a slightly quirky side, don’t we? For some, it’s counting (steps, minutes, peas), for others it’s repetitive motions (touching door handles or hair, checking and rechecking door locks), or any simple act that calms us. Whatever it is, we do it — some blatantly, some surreptitiously, some in the dark of night while sitting in a rocking chair on the roof of your house. Or someone else’s. (Um….) Sometimes it’s small things that just make us happy (I love to pick up bits of glitter — it’s everywhere!), a sudden memory of glorious times spent with friends, or a hidden pleasure that we don’t want revealed. And mostly, they’re all okay.
Life isn’t always a piece of cake, and sometimes we slip. But what makes us label someone as crazy? Is it the clothes they wear? A 24/7 Jack Nicholson grin? Silence? Staring? Loners?
Some of us are very blunt about our idiosyncrasies. I think bluntness generally helps us all unless there’s ill intent involved. Others are still figuring it out, which is fine, or dealing with psychoses, which is rough. I had an unsettling run-in with a very sweet person lately who changed personalities in a quick minute. Not her fault. Not my fault. Really messy day.
I’m a quiet girl. Always have been. Does that make me crazy? Idiosyncratic? Odd? Surprisingly knowledgeable about others?
I can’t say that I’m any smarter than most, but I can say that, generally speaking, I’m more aware than many, and that’s pretty much a good thing. But what would it take to move from awareness to stalking? Hiding? Fear? It gives me pause.
I pick up glitter because it was dropped by someone who revels in happy moments, and it delights me to carry that torch. Happy moments I can carry in my pocket, or spread across a new spot.
Life isn’t always a piece of cake. Keep the people and moments that make you happy.
Image: Pablo Picasso, one of my very favorite artists!
As a girl with a mirror, I never saw myself as ugly, despite my stubbornly cow-licked hair. I was short-ish and thin, with dark hair and darker eyes that could see to China and back. Out with my mother as a child or with friends in high school, I could feel eyes on me despite my shyness and disdain for beauty products. I had only a handful of photographs from those days, but it was enough. I knew my mirror well then, not because I was vain, but because I needed to see who was behind those eyes — where she came from, what she thought, where she would go. She didn’t spill any of the answers, but I had a passable understanding of her from year to year.
Coming to know who you are is a very personal journey. I’ve never been comfortable on the lens end of a camera, and early photos illustrate that all too well. So while I pulled at non-compliant hair and did my best to fit in, I was invariably the awkward girl in any photograph. And a photograph, no matter how random, how good, how bad, how bland or how earth shattering, changes the way you see yourself, does it not? Even if I could have convinced my brain that I don’t really look like that, or at least not all the time, it’s quite clear that this is the face I show to the world more often than not. But we are never just an awkward face.
My mom hated having her picture taken, and solved the issue by grimacing garishly and sticking her tongue out for every click of the button. It was a pretty effective way to erase the possibility that maybe this was her real face, her real soul, being shown. And why? She was beautiful.
It made me sad.
Thirty years later, I received an unexpected package from a very-long-ago boyfriend that held a cd filled with images he had captured in college. Back in the 70’s when few of us had cameras and even fewer had good ones, he was rarely without his Ricoh. To this day, he remains the only person, outside of my children, who could capture an image that showed my soul, simply because somewhere among those 1,095 days we spent together, I finally relaxed in front of the ever-present lens and let it see me.
And in a flash I was given the ability to see the girl I was, the girl I am, rather than the girl I’d been carrying around for decades. It made me happy.
Imagination / Perception / Memory: They live on in us regardless of how closely they match the actuality, don’t they?
I love clouds.
In fact I love them like crazy and I don’t even bother wondering why — I just look up in awe every day, gasp a little, and snap. Honestly, there’s not a day that I arrive home without some new cloud photo stashed in my computer.
This one was snapped at dusk near my daughter’s house, and I can’t help wondering when the fire will capture her too.
And it’s an interesting thing about clouds — I almost always miss the grand finale. I suppose it’s because I tend to come home at 5 or 6 and stay there. And even though the clouds are everywhere around me, my house is secluded, the trees abundant and tall, and to be honest, I forget.
Yes, I forget what isn’t in front of my eyes at a given moment. We’re all like that to some extent, but you know what? It’s a huge flaw in our day to day. Too often, the magic is exactly where we don’t look.
But then … on the days that I have a bit more leeway, I might walk out of the grocery store or bookstore or starbucks and BAM — I’m gobsmacked by the pulsing light that streaks the sky with gusto, almost as if the sky accidentally broke and, in the time it took to fit the pieces back together, we’ve almost, almost, forgotten that moment of magic.
Because we humans — we really need to learn to SEE.
Love to All
“You know, Hobbes, some days even my lucky rocket ship underpants don’t help.”
(Quote by Bill Watterson)
Today I was totally prepped for a great day. My husband has been on the other side of the continent for a week, and he flies home tonight. I’m wearing my Happy Clothes, saved for special days. The house is clean. Ish. I’ve amassed a neatly folded give-away pile with oooooooodles of my favorite (too small) outfits, we’re deep in the dregs of summer, which means we’ll soon be cooler (right?), I’m on break from cleaning the attic (self-imposed), and the garden flowers are joyously blooming despite daily basking in the bowels of hell.
But then — who knows, but something clicked — or unclicked, and hell threw open that door. And I’d say I haven’t been able to shake this Very Bad Day, but the truth is that I’m just not ready. Because you have to be real. You have to walk through these things rather than around. Otherwise they never go away, and just bury themselves in your psyche instead.
So I looked up Bad Day quotes. And honestly, they totally sucked except for Hobbes and Bill, so I made my own.
Snark: an attitude or expression of mocking irreverence and sarcasm.
Blech. I really, really don’t like snarky people. We all have so much goodness deep in our hearts — why waste it on the opportunity to hurt someone?
And I guess that’s the extent of it. I haven’t been shot or robbed or suffered a great loss. I have endless happy choices at my fingertips. But today, I guess what I really am is sad.
And I am. I’m really, really sad.
Footnote: Hobbes, named for philosopher Thomas Hobbes, is Calvin’s stuffed tiger and best friend.
Pam Goode Writes 