Echo

 

Echo / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping 

(please email me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com, if the button doesn't seem to work)

PETER AND I watched "Jeopardy!" pretty much every night for pretty much all of the 31 years we were married. Peter had a fantastic memory, and an incredibly wide range of knowledge. History, geography, science, Vikings, religion, politics, dogs, cars, photography, inventors, he knew it. I sometimes thought that if he had realized how little I actually know - like, where IS Paraguay? Is Trinidad and Tobago one country or two? And on and on - he'd never have married me. 

My knowledge, scant though it is, filled in some of his deficits. I am very good with vocabulary, spelling and grammar. I'm fairly good with knowing writers and artists and their work. And that's about it. 

When it came to popular culture ("popular" being a relative term, in our house), we were total losers. I still am. 

We played "Jeopardy!" every night, always taping it so we could skip over the commercials. Some time in the past 10 years or so, we devised a fun way to play the final question. The show always gives you the category, then goes to a commercial. So we would stop the tape and, before we found out the clue, we would guess the answer. Then we'd start the tape and watch the outcome. 

For instance, Friday's category was Fairy Tales. So I'd have guessed Cinderella, and he'd have guessed Thumbelina. 

We'd have stopped the tape and made our guesses before we heard the clue, which was this: "In French, this fairy tale character is La Petite Poucette, in Spanish, Paulgarcity and in English, this."

Turns out the answer was "Who is Thumbelina?" So I would have been wrong with Cinderella, but he would have been right. 

Usually, of course, we were wrong. But we would get the right answer once or twice a month, and it was always thrilling. It always made us laugh. One time, we got three in a row! 

Of course, there's a knack for getting the right answer. You have to be able to make a question about it, for starters. It has to be difficult but not impossible to get the answer. Those two concepts really narrow the field. But still, it's hard. And ridiculously fun - or at least it was for us.

I always thought, and still do, that the show should make this way of playing Final Jeopardy! an option. If you chose it and you won, you could triple your wager. If you chose it and missed, you'd lose everything. 

Well. I have not been able to watch "Jeopardy!" since Peter died. And now that Alex Trebec has died, I probably will never watch it again. It makes me sad to know that cancer finally, inevitably, got him. But it is helps me to think of Peter and Alex being together in Heaven, trading answers and questions. And Final Jeopardy guesses.

***

Coda

Nothing Is Far

Though I have never caught the word
of God from any calling bird,
I hear all that the ancients heard. 

Though I have seen no deity
Enter or leave a twilit tree,
I see all that the seers see. 

A common stone can still reveal
Something not stone, not seen, yet real.
What may a common stone conceal? 

Nothing is far that once was near.

Nothing is hid that once was clear.

Nothing was God that is not here. 

Here is the bird, the tree, the stone.

Here in the sun I sit alone

Between the known and the unknown. 

- Robert Francis

Angels Among Us

Angels Among Us / Oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 unframed

sold! 

LAST WEEK, I RECEIVED an email from a  jeweler friend (Hillary Burkett, whose website is https://camerashycove.com/) announcing that she was holding a Labor Day sale. 

What a great idea! 

I sent her a note, thanking her for spurring me on, and she told me that she'd received an email the day before from an artist friend of hers, announcing a Labor Day sale, and so she, Hillary, had done the same thing, decided, on the fly, to hold a Labor Day sale. 

So there was Angel No. 1. 

Angel No. 2 was all of you, who got online and bought paintings from me. My down-and-dirty one-day Labor Day sale was a big success! Thank you. 

Angel No. 3 was a couple who are very dear to me, who, out of the blue, sent me a check for $1,000 to help me pay for the $6,000 heat/AC unit, which I had to replace last week. 

Angel No. 4 got my son-in-law Paul to have a stress test with a cardiac camera somehow looking at his heart. Turns out he has a big blockage, and is scheduled for a cardiac catheterization and stent procedure on Monday. They found the problem before the problem found him, and I am thankful. 

Angel No. 5 is my galleries, many of which are selling my art like it's going out of style. I couldn't be happier or more grateful. 

Last and most, Angel No. 6 is my family and friends, all of you who support me with your love and kindness, your visits and phone calls and cards and letters, your help and laughter and walks with the dogs - and most of all, with your belief in me. Two of the most prominent members of this group, Mom and Peter,  are gone, but I know they are with me, maybe one on each shoulder. 

Yes, I have had a terrible loss and a bleak, difficult, depressing year. But we all have had a difficult year, and we are getting through it together. I am grateful for all the angels, for my higher power, and for the good fortune I have had throughout my life. 

My angels help me daily, and inspire me to be a better person, more generous, kinder, more forgiving - and remind me to be grateful every day. 

***

Second Friday

I AM SOMEWHAT AMAZED that we are already the second Friday in September, but apparently, we are. And that's important, because I'm the featured artist at Red Queen Gallery, during Onancock's Second Friday walk. It's Sept. 11 (gulp), from 4-7 p.m., at the Red Queen, 57 Market St., Onancock, here on the Eastern Shore.

 

Some of my art at the Red Queen

***

A Last Thought

300 Goats

In icy fields.
Is water flowing in the tank?
Will they huddle together, warm bodies pressing?
(Is it the year of the goat or the sheep?
Scholars debating Chinese zodiac,
follower or leader.)
O lead them to a warm corner,
little ones toward bulkier bodies.
Lead them to the brush, which cuts the icy wind.
Another frigid night swooping down -
Aren't you worried about them? I ask my friend,
who lives by herself on the ranch of goats,
far from here near the town of Ozona.
She shrugs, "Not really,
they know what to do. They're goats."

- Naomi Shihab Nye

Flight 2

Flight 2 / Oil on canvas / 5x7 / unframed / $68

I WITNESSED ONE of the world's amazing sights on Monday, watching maybe 200 Sand Hill cranes and 2,000 snow geese lift off from a shallow pond at Bosque del Apache wildlife preserve, in San Antonio, NM. 

This is a world-renowned birding area, and the cranes and snow geese are some of the most treasured visitors. People who know about such things told me that I might or might not see any cranes - that was what I was hoping to see - as it was near the end of the migration. No one mentioned the chance to see snow geese. 

I've seen huge flocks of snow geese on the Eastern Shore, but have never been so close, and have never seen or heard them lift off. The sound is utterly amazing - LOUD! And unlike anything I've ever heard. The beating of thousands of wings - it's a dry sound, with a locomotive-like churning beat. And it is also amazing that the birds don't damage each other with all their wings. 

The cranes were magnificent. They sleep standing up, in shallow ponds like this one, so that if a predator approaches, he will have to splash through the water, alerting them. They sleep with their heads under their wings, and leave a few cranes at the edges as sentries. 

When they left, it wasn't in the huge cloud of birds like the geese, but in pairs and small groups. They run a little through the shallow water, making a high-pitched keening sound, and then lift into the air, changing from huge, gawky creatures into lovely, elegant flyers. 

It felt like a miracle. 

 Above, Sand Hill cranes, Below, snow geese

***

For Today

For anyone living on or near the Eastern Shore,  or wanting to visit, an Antares rocket is scheduled to go into space on Feb. 9, from Wallops Island. If you can get to the visitor center to see the launch, it's really fun. Click the link below for more information. 

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/wallops/home

Roadrunner

Roadrunner / oil on canvas / 5x7 / unframed / $68, including shipping

AS I WRITE THIS, I am halfway through Texas. I've watched the landscape go from the flat, open plains of the Eastern Shore to the winter-scrubbed mountains of Tennessee, to rain-swollen, mud-filled rivers and bayous in Mississippi and Louisiana, to the still-green hills of eastern Texas. Today, I will find myself in dry, brown mountains and then flat, open plains, making some sort of a full circle before I see the mountains of New Mexico and the red soil of Arizona.

Two days ago, I found myself looking at a ramshackle, junk-strewn, chicken-filled yard of a trailer in a think forest near a stream in Mississippi, and wondering what life was like there, what it felt like to live in that trailer, eat eggs from those chickens, watch your dog drag mud into your house every day from that creek - and I realized that this is why I needed this trip so desperately. 

I needed to wonder, to think, to look outside myself. I needed this trip to wrench my focus off my own life, my own loss, my own circumstances. I needed to force myself to look beyond my own needs, and see something different, something new, something other than my world. 

***

For Today

Born Again

You can't trust oblivion.

In the Serious Mountains,

a hidden lake, utterly still

is swept suddenly by rain. 

Crow hops out of no crow

and eats the diamond -

countless births, countless deaths.

Sky brims over with sky,

Wind harrows the grasses,

River narrows and quickens,

stronger than the strongest swimmer.

It's only March, and already

the pear blossoms are falling.

Just remember this -

you weren't the one 

who wanted a separate being.

You are the frail wing, rescuing love

from love's faceless mirror. 

- Michael Hannon

From "A Bird Black as the Sun"

My Ruined Heart

My Ruined Heart

The days pass, endless and endlessly, longer than they should be, longer than they are. Longer than any days of my life. 

My family has been my backbone. Our daughter Erika, heart heavy with her own grief after witnessing Peter's death, has kept me upright, with love and calls, actions and caring, and the help of her husband Paul. My sister and brother traveled to Wachapreague, and spent days with me, comforting me, doing with me tasks that I could not do alone. Their families have reached out in big ways and small to help me through this agony. My dad and stepmother have reached out across the miles with love and support and hearts filled with parental caring and help.

My Eastern Shore friends have come, once I became able to see people, and have brought gifts and food and flowers and the salve of distraction and conversation. My friends from across the country and around the world have sent me letters and notes, cards and gifts, posted their love and support on social media and reached out, over and over, during this awful time.

I am truly humbled by the outpouring of love and support, and truly grateful. Thank you, all of you. I see your love, I realize its power, and I understand how very much I need all of it and all of you, who have given so freely.

Even so, even with all that, it's hard to describe how empty and centerless my life feels without Peter. It's a long, straight hallway with dim lights and no clear end, no turns, no doors. No windows. It is hard to feel that things will look shiny and bright again ever. In my head, I know they will - experience has taught me that they will - but my heart just doesn't know it yet.

I have been painting. I have been eating, and sleeping fairly well. I've been tending to my unruly pack of dogs, and find that I am grateful for their endless needs and their exuberant joy, and how they greet me with exhilarated welcome every time I walk through a door.

Hold your loved ones close, that is a thing I know now in a way I never knew before, and find a way to a peaceful heart today, in this moment. If there is a thing you do, a way you are, that you don't like in your relationship, change it. Imagine - if he died today, would you regret being a nag? If he died today, would you wish you'd spent less time asking him to pick up his stuff and more time telling him how much you love him? If he died today, would he know how central he was to everything that you do?

These questions and their inevitable answers of failure have cut deep into my heart since Peter died. In the daily ups and downs of marriage, we take small frictions and minor squabbles for granted. I wish I hadn't. I wish I'd been more accepting, kinder, more willing to overlook, give in, acquiesce. I wish I'd written him more poetry and fewer reminder notes. I wish I'd sung him the song of my heart more fully and more clearly. I'd give anything to take back those careless quibbles and exchange them for words of love and support.

We had a good marriage - even, maybe, a great one. We loved each other, treasured each other, told each other so, and sought to make each other happy every day. But if I'd known it would end so soon, so abruptly, I'd have changed so much about myself. I'd have been such a better person, such a better wife. I'm sharing this now not to berate myself, but to offer a moment's pause that might help you avoid an eternity of longing.

Never Give Up

Never Give Up

Oil on canvas, 14x14

Please click here to email me for price and delivery/shipping information

Long ago, I decided that when the voice - or God or the universe, or my Higher Power, or Nature, whatever works for you - tells me to go down a path, I should go, and not resist.

That's what has happened with me now, with three abstract pieces. I did not set out to make these, and all I can say is that they more or less made themselves. There's a part of me that's hoping this is a short, strange phase, and there's a part of me that's hoping this is the start of a journey of exploration.

Tomorrow, I am making a floral, and when that's done, I have a photo of some cows that I'm yearning to make into a painting, so I doubt that the abstracts are going to exclude any of my regular work - but I am excited about them, in the way you're sometimes excited about meeting a strange, interesting, new person.

Please let me know what you think.

***

Stuff I've Seen

Well, the Paradise City show in Marlborough, Mass., was not a great show for me in terms of sales, though commissions from supporters and patrons certainly helped!

One man bought a biggish cow painting (above), and that was great. A collector bought a small floral and I forgot to take a Happy Buyer photo. I also forgot to take a Happy Buyer photo of one of my strongest collectors, who bought a floral painting. If you buy something from me and I seem to be forgetting the Happy Buyer photo, please remind me!

But shows are not only about sales, and this one was about friends. In addition to the collectors who bought from me, I was visited by my friend Heather, from Maine (in the selfie above left) and my friends from college, Penny and Amy (below). Andy, a friend of my brother's who has become a friend of mine over the years, also came to the show. That's him at the top, pointing to a postcard of my stuff.

***

Dog of the Day

This little guy thought he was the size of the van, apparently, as he placed himself in front of the van a couple days ago and refused to let me go by. I rolled the window down and yelled at him and got a mouthful of barking for my trouble. 

***

A Final Thought

"Every morning when I wake up, I experience an exquisite joy - the joy 

of being Salvador Dali - and I ask myself in rapture: What wonderful things 

is this Salvador Dali going to accomplish today?" 

- Salvador Dali

Exploring an Idea

These two paintings -"Four in Hand," above, and "Swirling Sky," left, come from an experiment I've been doing. In both, I put much of the paint on the canvas in loose blobs (big loose blobs), and then used my knives to pull the paint into images. 

I love both of these pieces, though neither does precisely what I was hoping to do, which is to pull the whole painting - somewhat abstract, somewhat realistic - from the blobs of paint. 

This is tantalizing to me, and I'm going to keep trying it, either until I learn to master the idea, or I find I'm at the end of this particular road. 

The top painting is now in the home of a buyer, who is deciding whether to keep it. It's 15x60. The lower painting, 20x20, is in a gallery, Art House Charlotte, in Charlotte, NC. Please drop me an email if you're interested in either, or in having me make a similar painting for you. 

Dogs of the Day  

Jojo (above) and Zoe (below) have been gone for just about a year now. I miss them both,  and also I miss Smokey, who died a few months ago, and Sam and Looie, who passed in 2014. It's been a tough stretch, and we knew it would be, way back when. 

But our dogs enrich our lives. They make me laugh, they make me stop and play, they help me love with abandon and joy, and to forgive when forgiveness is required, right away and without rancor. There is always the pain of loss, when you have a dog. That's the price we pay for the love of a dog, the companionship, the countless hours of laughter and comfort. Zoe was a dear girl and I miss her. Jojo was the dog of my heart, and I'll never stop missing her. 

***

A Final Thought

"Only put off until tomorrow what you are willing to die having left undone." 

- Pablo Picasso

May Azaleas - a Step Away for Me

May Azaleas

Oil on canvas, 10x10, $100 plus shipping if applicable

sold

There's a part of me that always wants to paint more loosely, more abstractly. But I yam who I yam, I guess, and so, most of the time, my paintings are fairly well rooted in realism. And that's fine - but still, on the rare occasions that an abstract sort of piece comes along, I welcome it. 

This started as a painting of a chicken, a large chicken face, and I just didn't like it. So I started smushing the paint around, then adding this and adding that, and azaleas arose from it - at least to my eye. 

I love the colors in this one, and the stepped swirls of paint. I love the energy of it, and knowing that it was a "mistake," transformed. What do you think? 

***

Dog of the Day

The first time I visited Wachapreague, one of the things that impressed me was that, here and there, cats were just hanging out on front porches and stoops. The sight spoke to me of a place so quiet and sunny that the cats were warm and happy and safe. And that insight was true. This happy cat was snoozing in the afternoon yesterday on a sunny stoop on Pearl Street. 

***

A Final Thought

"I would rather die of passion than of boredom." 

- Vincent Van Gogh