The Long Practice

For the time being, I have stopped painting.

For more than forty years, painting has defined my existence. It has been my daily discipline, my way of understanding the world, my place of inquiry and refuge. There have been brief interruptions—periods of extended travel when photography took precedence, or moments when life delivered a blow so heavy it was impossible to lift a brush to canvas. When my oldest daughter died, painting simply fell away. There was no decision involved. It was just gone.

Recently, the pause has come for different reasons.

Many hours have been spent writing—especially completing my travel memoir, The Weight of Air. (Available now by donation—here)  The memoir is largely taken from posts found here, in My Fairy-Tale Life. In 2008 I went around the world for one year and lived in 25 countries. Along with me came my paints and camera. 

The writing demanded a different kind of attention, one that left little room for paint. At the same time, I found myself uncertain about what to paint. Not how, but what. The familiar urgency wasn’t there, and forcing it felt dishonest.

In the meantime, ideas did not disappear. They simply shifted direction.

There has been photography—new work, still unfolding. There have been final revisions to the memoir, shaping it into an e-book, letting it take its own form. Poetry has crept in quietly. And lately, something unexpected has emerged: a new series built from old ground.

Over decades, I accumulated hundreds of figure drawings. They were never meant as finished works—mostly studies, explorations, moments of attention. Mostly female forms, some male. They lived in drawers, folders, and eventually in digital archives. I rarely looked back at them.

Now I have.

Using these drawings as a foundation, I’ve begun combining them digitally with photographs of graffiti, walls, weathered surfaces, and street textures gathered from years of wandering across cities and countries. The figures—intimate, vulnerable, inward—meet the marks of public space: abrasion, repetition, accident, history. The collision has produced something neither source could accomplish alone.

The results have surprised me.

They feel less like paintings and more like conversations—between past and present, private and public, line and scar. Some figures sit, wait, turn inward. Others lean, stretch, confront. They are not heroic. They are human. They exist within surfaces that have already lived a life.

This way of working suits where I am right now. My temperament has always been to follow an idea when it arrives, even if it runs counter to previous directions. Perhaps it’s the adventurer’s impulse—one I’ve written about before. I’ve learned to trust it.

I don’t know when paint and canvas will call again. For now, attention has simply moved elsewhere, and that feels honest. This pause isn’t absence or loss; it’s another way of listening. The work continues, just not in the way it once did. And for the moment, that feels right.

A Breeze Causes a Stir

One dark night not long ago, we scooped a tan, medium sized dog up off the streets and made her part of our family. She arrived with an open heart and an eagerness to belong, as though she had been waiting for someone to say, All right then, come in—you’re home now. We named her Brisa, which in Spanish means Breeze.

Of course, we knew nothing of her past, so our first concern was her health. A veterinarian from our village came by and gave her a couple of injections to ease the pain in her injured foot and ankle. Soon after, we took her into the city for a full checkup, vaccinations, and to have her sterilized.

That was when we were told she had already been spayed.

This came as a surprise. We had inspected her ourselves and found no sign of it, but the veterinarian felt what seemed to be a scar—although slightly higher on her abdomen than expected. Relieved, and more than a little grateful, we took Brisa back home, believing the matter settled.

Then, about a week later, it happened.

Small drops of blood appeared on the floor in a trail. We checked both dogs for injuries—nothing. Brisa, meanwhile, was licking herself and being her usual affectionate self.

It slowly dawned on us.

Brisa was in heat.

We had no idea we weren’t just rescuing a dog, but welcoming a princess—one whose arrival would summon admirers from every corner of the neighborhood.

Our household was instantly thrown into a kind of quiet, frantic disarray. It is a good thing we don’t have wall-to-wall white carpets! Our floors are Saltillo tile, which means they can be mopped—and so they are. About thirty times a day.

There were other complications. A neighbor’s dog, Oso, lives on our property, and he became very attentive to Brisa’s new condition. So did several other dogs, who began showing up outside our fence whenever we took her out on a leash for her business. This was a new arrangement. Before, she wandered our property freely, alongside Mali—and Oso.


She has shown a little curiosity about the other dogs, though she’s gone toward the fence, as if she is wanting engagement. She is not quite ready yet. Oso tried mounting her once, and she snapped at him sharply, as if to say, "Not so fast, mister!" But we can sense what’s coming. Soon enough, she will be wanting to be, as the old song goes, “where the boys are.”

A couple of days ago, a particularly determined neighbor dog made it through the barrier, resulting in a fierce and noisy altercation with Oso. I feared the worst for the other dog—and dreaded having to explain it to the vecinos. To separate them, I had to employ the large wooden staff I now carry. And this—all before Brisa has even reached the most intense stage of her cycle.

Apparently, the whole affair lasts about three weeks.
Ughhh.

Still, every time I look at her—tail wagging, eyes bright, heart wide open—my own heart responds in kind. Like her tail, it starts thumping all on its own. We remind ourselves that all things pass, even the messy and inconvenient ones, and that soon enough we’ll find a good clinic and get this little chapter of chaos resolved.

In the meantime, we mop, we watch, and we laugh when we can. Brisa, blissfully unaware of the trouble she has stirred up, simply continues being Brisa—sweet, loving, and very much at home.