From
Primitive Hostel
www.rockymountainhostel.com
Ralph van Drielen: Poet and Siamese Twin of Enid Petherick
SERENDIPITY
or THE ANATOMY OF A SALE
We had been framing all day, the floor of Enid's studio was littered with discards, the living room filling with finished pieces. We'd stopped for a welcome break when Enid suddenly noticed a woman walking away from our house down our laneway.
They proved to be a Dutch family, including two teenage daughters. They we on holiday in the mountains and were driving an old borrowed truck and using an old borrowed tent. They had been looking for a campground marked on their map but which no longer exists and they had tried to drive to another campground up near the glacier but the road had been washed out. Returning they had followed our hostel signs--full of doubt as the road became steadily more narrow and rough. Then a fence with a sign "Primitive Hostel". Then another 200 meters and a sign "Park Here" with an arrow pointing to the "office"--but not a building in sight, just a footpath through ripe wild raspberries becoming ever more overgrown. When they finally reached our house--with the remnants of our old chimney piled on the deck--they hadn't been quite sure where they were--or whether they wanted to be there!
But they came in amid our apologies about the mess and we sat on our front deck and looked at the mountains and listened to the birds and I mentioned the cabin but it is one room and I couldn't imagine this European family of four thinking it suitable. And then simply because the paintings were there I decided to show them and we soon had an impromptu "art exhibition" in our living room.
They were very excited about Enid's paintings--but that is a common reaction--and focused on one called "Dancing Landscape". Enid had struggled with this painting for over a year, a 30"x40" acrylic on canvas.
If hung vertically it is a female figure--or two--and maybe you're seeing her front and maybe her back--or both--you can't really be sure because the figure is MOVING through a twist. And if you hang it horizontally you have a softly rounding landscape. And the colors--Enid's colors--are alive! I learned later that the father had asked Enid the price and she couldn't remember but had said between "$1000 and $2000".
They bought a couple of cards--$3--and I thought that was the end but we started to the cabin--it can't be seen from the house--and looked at this tiny cabin with its huge wood cook stove and the sink with a bucket under for a drain and the new deck/woodshed/toilet structure we had been building all summer--the toilet (a bucket composting toilet) still has no door or windows--and I was expecting them to say how wonderful and then to leave for someplace more comfortable. But the daughters decided the floor area was just big enough for wall-to-wall bodies and they were familiar with wood stoves and they never closed their bathroom door at home anyway--so they stayed--$30! Things were really looking up.
The mother came back to the house to pay and casually asked the price of "Dancing Landscape". By now--out of curiosity--Enid had looked it up and said "$1500, but I'd be willing to negotiate."
That night it rained--long and hard. In the morning Enid and I cleaned the studio and brought down the last of the paintings that will be at the RedShift ArtSpot Gallery. About noon they came to say goodbye and I invited them up to see Enid's studio. They looked at the photo books of her paintings and I got our "Grandmother's Garden" and "Reverence" to show them. They said they had been thinking of buying "Dancing Landscape" but it was more than they wanted to pay and they didn't like to "negotiate" over art. So we discussed shipping and the father went downstairs to his pack and returned with a thousand Deutsche mark bill and six hundred Dutch guildre and said this would be about the amount. I suggested that we'd have trouble trying to cash such large foreign currency in Golden...and we would not likely get a favorable exchange rate...But they needed their Canadian money... After a brief discussion in Dutch, one of the daughters went downstairs with the father while Enid and I were discussing a method with the mother whereby we could cash the Deutsche mark and guilder and send the exchange rate to them in Holland. Then they could make up the difference. At that point the father and the daughter returned with ten Canadian one hundred dollar bills and one U.S. one hundred dollar bill!
They decided to take the painting with them to save shipping costs and we packaged it in a cardboard create and we all walked to their old noisy borrowed truck with their old borrowed tent. They happily tied their almost $1200 purchase under a tarp and we very, very happily waved to this marvelous family--who have their priorities right--as they noisily but slowly departed our simple laneway.
What is Not Beautiful
by Ralph van Drielen
What is not beautiful?
What then is not beautiful?
What merest pebble glittering
in some dank brook
Does not proclaim Nature's
intent?
What abandoned shell drying
at the ocean's edge
Is not monumental?
What cone clinging to
stately tree
Does not whisper intricacy?
Why is rust red, sulphur
yellow, old glass blue?
What four-footed creature
slipping through the forest
Does not fit?
What bird soaring above
is graceless?
Why should fish be iridescent?
What property of water
creates these clouds that float
Like fluffy seagulls against
the blue:
Why should these clouds--
These swirling vapors,
this misty face of water--
Why should these promote
a sunset surging spellbound before each day's dying sun?
Where is the plant that
lacks beauty?
Why is moss green, grass
green, tree green--and each a different color?
Why should crystals be
symmetrical?
What taste outreaches
a cherry?
Who made
waves? And why should this moving-but-not-moving water quiver under moonlight with such
stupefying peace?
What wondrous magic is
a mirror, that I am inside and yet not?
Why should lightning strike
nitrate from the air to fertilize the ground?
What is snow?
And why should each white
flake flutter, yet crunch together in some child's throw, and scratch the
rock itself in glacial plummet?
Why should stone-age molecules
harbor plastic within their capabilities?
What woman to what man--what
man to what woman--is not beautiful?
What that we two can play
in the dark and
A child bursts into being
amid the trumpeting of Angels!
What rare splendor waltzes
with the jellyfish?
What use is a rainbow?
As if God outran his miracles
And this one fell behind
and he yelled,
"Keep
it. Let it be an inspiration!"
As he boarded the celestial
train.
What is not beautiful?
What then is not beautiful?
