Anishanabee Canoe Race

(photos will be posted soon)

Here I am back at the same beach. Today it is filled with people. There is a canoe race going on with members of the Leech Lake Anishanabee Tribe and others. Green canoes line the shore. Those in first place are only 37 seconds ahead in the lead.

There's a cool breeze blowing real hard as I sit at a table with the first place winners. They tell me they have come all the way down from near Bemidji to participate. "It's about a six hour drive".

Cool breezes blow. I swim as always...Darling children swim up to me in their charm and splendor...telling me where the drop off is...right there..right where I am. Such sweet faces. They bob about in their blue life jackets blowing whistles.I am trying in more ways than one, not to fall into the deep waters.

I feel cool breezes blow. On shore two large tee pees are set up.Painted majestic colors with eagles and bright colors and symbols. Wooden stakes hold the teepees in the ground. I go inside one of them.I step through a portal of time.There, look, look again into the center of a world that once was. I am grateful to allow ancient memories that are not even mine to stir. Grateful to muse on how it all must have been so long ago for the native people of this area. Inside the tee pee I can close my eyes and imagine what it might have been like decades ago, to live in one. Perhaps this lovely beach was a summer settlement.
Sometimes when I swim here I can feel something stir..Old memories that belong to place. Was this beach a summer encampment? A place to fish, gather foods? Cat tails.. and..a place to feel the summer breezes....
These musings gather around me. I pause, looking at the group. Wondering about their past, their history and now their present, so fought for and now so enduring. All that has happened to the native people of this area. Poignant, tough, and now this moment of the canoe races keeps something enduring. I swim in the water, out past the drop off point, then come into shore to hear the wise elders speak to the group... Their wisdom remains. "Take Care of Mother Earth." These two men pass on their wisdom to the next generation.
On a hot summer day I watch and feel grateful for this moment at my favorite little beach.

love at the beach

We went to the beach today for our date together and had lots of fun...

the fishermen and women

At the beach again. It is another beautiful day. It feels like summer will never end....but I know the sands will be cold someday and snow will pile up high as I slip across the ice of this very place where I swim in the summer heat today.

For now, this is enough.

Today there are two people fishing. They have their poles set up by the water just so...they can sit in the shade and watch the slight movement in the waters as the waves lap the shore..

I watch from the waters. Careful not to disturb their fishing...

Suddenly the pole moves!! The large fat man springs into action..everyone runs towards the bobbing pole as he starts to reel in a big fish...then nothing..the fish got away..

I muse....my mermaid tail of musing wags and takes me down into deeper waters..I swim into deeper waters and muse some more...thinking way back in time to when I lived on a small island off the west coast of Ireland over 30 years ago. Time passes..that project lingers...it is a memoir...a visual memoir..that project My memoir, my drawings, my organized and disorganized ideas are in boxes, in piles...I moved them around on a regular basis...but if not now, when?? there are fish I need to catch in a symbolic way....poles that need bait..Lately I have worked on a query letter....something to catch someone's interest........a publisher's
( oh so grandiose an idea) interest?? an editor??? an agent?? someone interested to help me pull this material together and post it to the world...

I muse, I swim deeper into philosophical waters ....wondering...if I am brave enough, if this project is worth it..if I have enough courage....wondering as I flop around in the waters.....wondering and musing some more...

The fishermen on the shore bait their hooks, cast a line and wait for a bite. Their presence inspires me. I will persevere..

so here, dear reader is my query letter:

WATER FROM THE WELL: My Island Memoir by Anita White
Over the past thirty years I have worked on a visual and written narrative memoir about the period of time I spent living on the island of Inisheer from 1975 to 1979. My memoir captures the rhythm of island life as well as the philosophical and inward musings I experienced living alone in such a remote area. The island was 2 miles by 2 miles, population 250. Everyone was related. I was a stranger there. While I lived there I wove belts for a living. I also kept a journal, drew and painted. My life revolved around the simple demands of living with no running water or electricity. Every day I made a coal fire for warmth and cooking. Each morning I cleaned out the ashes It was still a time of tradition on the island. A timeless place of saint’s beds, ancient buried church in the sand and old places of meaning and mystery. When I lived there I went to the spring daily for drinking water. I left the old thatched cottage that had once been the house of the storyteller and walked the narrow borreen path to get to the spring for the fresh water which filled my blue plastic bucket. That fresh spring water is also a metaphor for the time I spent there and the memories that have welled up since that have informed my narrative memoir process. While there I made friends with some of the wise old people of the island. They told me about the tides, how to gather seaweed and what kind of weather each wind brought.
. The memoir is structured on the series of drawings I made of a traditional tarred boat (curragh) that I documented during my last summer ( 1978) on the island. Essays, poems, and musings accompany each drawing. Having made friends with the boat maker I set out to document the making of a curragh from start to finish. I also have a series of colorful drawings about my relationship to the storyteller whose cottage I lived in that constitutes a cartoon graphic novel.
. My island life calls out to me like a siren from the past In retrospect I marvel at the simplicity of my island life before cell phones and the Internet This book will appeal to those who yearn to know what it is like to live a simple like that. It is a unique journey of an artists life in far away place.
I live in Minneapolis, Minnesota. I am an artist, storyteller and art teacher (twenty five years) I have shown my art work widely in the Twin Cities area.
I look forward to hearing from you. Anita White

At the beach with my friend

I am at last able to see a dear friend again. I prepare a nice meal of rice, vegetables, hot sauce, pickles as well as chard and parsley from the garden. It is tasty.
So good to see her again.She has been through chemotherapy and breast cancer and is well again.

We swim in the lake.

I say a blessing over the food and then a healing blessing for her. Trusting that all the good energies from all the realms..the heavenly ones in the blue sky and the lower ones in the mysterious waters are there for her. We wave her illness away..away..away..and feel it leave.

We eat...

It is all a blessing.

How to take One's Elderly Parents to the Beach

How to take your Elderly Parents to the Beach.........a sandy memoir

Step One

Loll around in the shade of their backyard at home, wondering if really should leave the shade and travel in the hot car to the beach.

Step Two
Cajole Dad to leave, as he sits inside in the living room.

Step Three
Settle family argument that breaks out between Mom and Dad.

Step Four
Change into swimsuit discreely in walk in closet downstairs.

Step Five
Pile swim bags in car with towel, sunscreen, little hat to wear in the water, beach sandals.

Step Six
Worry about where parents will sit at the beach. Will they find shade?

Step Seven
Assist parents getting into the car.

Step Eight
Drive down shady streets, thinking of the best beach to go to and will my parents find easy access getting out of the car and to the beach.

Step Nine
Spot two perfectly good plastic chairs by someone's dumpster. Stop car, throw chairs in back of car. Proceed to beach.

Step Ten
Find Good parking spot. Assist parents getting out of the car.

Step Eleven Run ahead and place plastic chairs in the shade.

Step Twelve
Help parents into chairs, adjust their sitting positions as needed so that they are completely in the shade.

Step Thirteen
Take off glasses, watch, earrings and outer clothes. Put on little pink swimming hat. Get ready to go into the water.

Step Fourteen
Reassure mother that you won't be long.

Step Fifteen
Realize that mother complains and is never satisfied.

Step Sixteen
Realize that mother wants more than you can ever give.

Step Seventeen
Realize and feel all this and go get into the water anyway.

Step Eighteen
Slowly get into the water as usual. Swim back and forth and feel good.
Feel better and better.

Step Nineteen
Flip your mermaid's tail and plunge underwater into the deeper places where
memory resides. Go down deep and emerge, recalling how pleasant it was long ago when you spent your childhood summer afternoons at the beach with your siblings and your mother.

Step Twenty
Recall as you swim along like a lyrical mermaid now, how timeless and pleasant those afternoons were and how they are now as well.

Step Twenty one
Recall how there is a painting somewhere in your basement that you painted of your mother at the beach... remember to take a digial photo of it sometime so you can add it to your blog.

Step Twenty two
Enjoy the waves, the velvety water, the way the lake feels as you swim along.. Feel relaxed and happy. Without cares.

Step Twenty three
Look up to see your little 89 year old mother waving her hands to you from the beach. Time to go in.. leave the water slowly, releasing your memories with a swish of your mermaid's tail.

Step Twenty four
Find sandals on the beach. Walk on the sand up to your parents. Grab towel and sit in the sun drying off.

Step Twenty five
Capture this moment. Grab your paper, paint and pen. Draw it, paint it, feel it.
Here it is this moment with your parents at the beach.

Step Twenty six
Repeat steps eleven through seven in reverse order.

Step Twenty seven
Cast one last look at the beach...longingly, knowingly...soothingly...knowing you will be back as soon as you can...G-d willing.

The Small Beach

What a beautiful summer. Cares slip away as I dive into the waters of many a beach. The north beach at Nokomis, the Main Beach at Lake Calhoun, the beach of my childhood: 32nd street beach at Lake Calhoun. I return there again and again, diving into my memories and rising up smiling. My memories circling around me in the deep waters. Yes, I take refuge from my various woes and the uncertainties of care taking my parents as I plunge daily into the waters...Each beach is so pleasant. I take my parents to the beach as well.

And then, on a walk with my friend around Lake Nokomis I notice this small beach with just one picnic table. I return to this beach again and again. It has become my private beach this summer. It is small and self contained. I walk quickly across the hot sands into the water. There is a sharp drop off there. The cool waters rise up around me...I swim and muse and muse and swim.

MEM(ORY) watery musings by Cedar Lake

Uptown is crowded with people and events. We wait in traffic in the hot car, deciding which beach we will go to today. Cedar Lake. More waiting. Getting hotter. Finally traffic moves.
and there it is...the beach with its sloping hill down to the water. I carefully park the car, get the chairs out of the back and start down the slope with mom on one arm and dad on the other.
The traffic cop stops me.."What about your car?" he says. I look at him and say" Can't you see I am trying to help my parents to the beach?" I feel the responsibility for my parents as I guide them to shady spot on the hill. We continue. I find quickly set up the chairs, settle my parents and run back to park the car.

The lake, the water, the memories.....cool deep waters.. all around and near the edges..the waterlilies. I sit down to paint the lake and the swimmers. I recall the Hebrew Letter Mem that begins the letter for water.Mayim. It also begins the Hebrew word for Mother and Angel. As I paint I decide to place a floating Mem in the waters of Cedar Lake, not unlike some mysterious water lily. Water, angel and mother. I feel all three of these elements as I swim..and mem is also found in memory.

****************
Another reverie by the waters of Cedar Lake
Later, as we gaze at the beach. My dad remembers how our old friends who lived near by used to join us at this beach. Old friends they were...... and Carol now gone several years..memory surfaces and I recall that yesterday was her birthday. Then I dive down deep into the lake of memory bringing up what I recall of Carol and her amazing life.
She was born in New York City. I do not know much about her early life..What I recall is a beautiful dark haired women with a zest for life. She knew how to throw great parties with her husband and she was a prolific artist.Vibrant, quirky, vivacious Carol the artist. A mentor to me and a friend to our family. I knew her first in Minneapolis and then later visited her in California where she and her husband settled. Carol showed me how to be an artist..Interesting how so many of my lake side memories are connected with my identity as an artist.
She would want to be remembered now..even in some floating blog that circles the world in the realm of the Internet. Now she surfaces in my memories as I swim near where she used to live....what will be revealed next in the watery depths of memory and musing?

Ogunquit, Maine 1972

So, here I am in Ogunquit, Maine. The year is 1972. I have come east with my family on vacation and bravely stay on. I luckily found an ideal job living with a young woman and her child. I watch him at night when she works. My days are spent by the ocean. Wandering, painting and drawing. It is a summer of wonder and beauty by the beach. It is the summer I discover myself as an artist.

This painting of the beach is the culmination of my summer painting. I spend hours on it....and then gaze at it for years....remembering.

18 Beaches 18 Days: A Memoir Introduction

This summer of 2010 I have spent a lot of time at the beach. When the day gets hot I just jump right into the water at the nearest beach I can. I often go to a beach near me, sometimes I discover a new beach and other times I go to the beach of my childhood. With a flick of the mermaid's tail of memory I dive down into the waters and into my memories of other times at the beach.

So here are the paintings I have done at the beach over time. Sometimes right in the hot moment like yesterday. Other images are gathered up from the rich coral reefs of the past.

Here. I present my beach musings to you. Paintings, feelings, emotions and deep mermaid moments of musings that come up from below.