Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 1 Comment

Sizing the Shell

A potential wedding dress arrives in the mail, and just like my dream last week, it’s at least two sizes too big.

I take a break from how to alter silk and ruffles, overcome with a compelling urge to give another try at rendering our turtle. In case, you’re new to the Archives, a painted turtle wandered into our yard last week and she has become the latest member of the family.

Her name is Zelva (the Bohemian helped with the Czech name for ‘turtle’), and on her first night with us I was artistically inspired. Never meant to be a realistic interpretation, (more fantastical, really, as I couldn’t get the Grateful Dead’s “Terrapin Station” out of my head) I played with color and lines.

But Zelva has had more to show me since that first night. There’s not much to do with a turtle except sit with it in the sunshine and watch every deliberate movement. She’s a natural mystic in perpetual meditation. And these backyard lawn sessions have given me more time to contemplate her shell.

So while the white Neiman Marcus dress hangs in the bedroom saying I’m a size four not an eight, I’m at the kitchen table trying a second take on Zelva’s little turtle body. There’s a bit of fantasy in both of these shells I’m trying to size. The wedding dress will have some kind of veil and the turtle, well, her likeness gets a little gold marker bling.

It’s summertime with turtles, wedding dresses and late night art projects. And just some mysterious thread I’m following.

Zelva, take one
Zelva, take two
Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 2 Comments

Closer to the Light

Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved
Jessica Dofflemyer ~ all rights reserved

On the shortest day of the year, we spend time wandering the seaside village. Sidewalks with dogs on leashes. Driftwood, rock piles and bright flowers in salted sunshine.

My sister’s patience conjures awe as she navigates 2 three year-olds through cinnamon sticky buns and waving sticks that mimic power tools. I’d forgotten this age, and it seems Jeb has too, as he watches, puzzled, at their antics, my index finger through the belt loop of small jeans that are kneeling over the edge of the river.

We leave Santa Cruz County by 2 and the sun is already tilting to set. Back to scanning the radio dial. We’re in Fresno County on Highway 99 by dusk, and have returned to the radio scan where one can choose from Christmas songs done Mariachi style on 5 different stations or country-style ala KJUG. Or one can just listen to a reading from the Bible.

Jeb reaches one finger toward the power button of the radio dial, his eyebrows lifted in my direction. “Is it just better this way?”

He means “off”. I say “yes.”

Silence and the sun melt with hazy sky to make a pink soup of cotton candy. Leftover french fries sit in the Burger King bag between us. Headlights on the semis move colors on the highway. Winter Solstice and we’re just going to keep getting closer to the light.

Posted on by Jessica Dofflemyer · 4 Comments

Road Trip December 2011

“Guns Next Exit”
says the roadside sign
Highway 99
we’re driving north
through San Joaquin Valley
radio scan
gifts Fleetwood Mac
twice
“All I want for Christmas is My Two Front Teeth”
and the
Beastie Boys
I turn them up loud
“No Sleep Til Brooklyn”
Jeb: “Mom, you’re acting too much like a boy”

semis
mini vans
and red sports cars
travel the straightaway
the smell of cow poop
from adjacent farm land
gets in the car
even with all the windows up

At Denny’s
our server Brenda
keeps bringing free hot chocolate refills
whipped cream included
Jeb: “She is sooo nice!”

We click along
continue on
as hawks watch from telephone lines
Jeb naps
and I’m with Pimsleur
learning to say
I don’t speak Czech very well
“Nemluvím česky moc dobře”

We idle through
Los Banos
pass Starbucks
I never knew this town
had a Henry Miller Plaza

the Bohemian calls to tell me
he’s in my house
stealing popcorn
climbing ladders
and fixing my smoke detector
he’s planted radicchio in
“your garden”
I say
“our garden”
Ok
he slept one night in my bed
he laughs and says
“my bed”
tells me
the garlic shoots
are eight inches long
and
“you’ll be home in 11 days”
he knows the number
that I hadn’t counted yet

This morning on the hardwood floor
of my sister’s Santa Cruz house
I sit by the wood stove at 4:45am
these California posts to the Archives
are scattered and unfocused
I’m in new houses
with different mugs and power outlets

I lean on the words of John Lennon
and hope these snapshots
however grammatically incorrect
or loosely wandered
are slightly redeemed
with a hint of something real
self-evident
I’m displaced and curious
just reporting details

“Rock and roll was real, everything else was unreal. And the thing about rock and roll, good rock and roll, whatever good means, is that it’s real, and realism gets through to you despite yourself. You recognize something in it which is true, like all true art. Whatever art is, readers, ok? If it’s real, it’s simple usually, and if it’s simple, it’s true, something like that. Rock and roll got through to you, finally.”
~ John Lennon,  Lennon Remembers