Tone

In order to cut down on both household expenses and wasted paper, my wife and I canceled our magazine subscriptions many years ago. However, in addition to junk mail, I still receive a few free magazines and newsletters in the mail, including "Pollution Engineering," "Mission Critical," "Currents," and "Tall Tupelo Tales" - all related to conserving and preserving. Gotta love irony.

As ants wander over our house, spider webs fill with ant-shaped blobs. My window holds about eleven such spider meals. In addition to stripping the deciduous holly of its berries, birds (or other creatures) have eaten a lot of the young redbud seed pods.

Observations such as these feel real to me, as if there is no question that the connections inside my body are directly related to the events outside my body, if there is such a thing as a body, a fact I have yet to verify but which I use to conserve and preserve whatever sense of self propels me throughout the day.

Yesterday, a series of events occurred that don't feel real today but I have physical evidence that proves otherwise.

I drove over to northwest Alabama to a little town called Florence to attend a wedding tea party at a set of structures set aside for religious adherents to participate in rituals which provide moral guidance and allow practice of any lessons learned in that field of study. I am not familiar with the new rituals associated with two people receiving social approval for cohabitation, even though I participated in similar type rituals a couple of decades ago. The events yesterday confirm that I have not kept up with the latest trends.

When I walked in the door, I was handed a set of acrylic paints, a few large paint brushes, an easel and a blank canvas.

I looked around the room and saw that the people there were what I would call classic country folk, the women having tightly curled ('permed') hairdos and wearing long skirts, and the men having short cut hair, parted and combed to one side, pressed down with lots of hairspray, and wearing long-sleeved shirts and dark slacks. The future bride and groom sat on rattan chairs like a king and queen at a coronation, surrounded by silk flowers and paper ribbons, attended by young women oohing and aahing over the gifts placed at the feet of the soon-to-be-married couple. A bulletin board behind them displayed pinned-on photos of the man and woman growing up with their separate families. The gifts included a blender, crock pot, food chopper, TV trays, framed college football print, towels, sheets, curtains, Pyrex cookware, doormats, hammer, handsaw, photo album, tea pitcher, gift cards, Mikasa bowl, quilt rack and fire extinguisher.

Everyone looked pretty much alike, almost all having dark hair and same color of skin, a light nutmeg with hints of white and pink.

I set the canvas on the easel and started painting an expanded version of my last work, "Profit Sharing," painting a background of black on one half and a background of pink and yellow stripes on the other half. After I let the background dry, I listened to the people around me, looking for words or phrases to write on the canvas and then paint around. Two snippets of conversation stood out:

• "Couples today are lucky. They think they get to have everything when they get married. When we got married, and I admit it was more than a few years ago, I was 18 and he was 20. I was lucky we got a washer. It was 10 years before I got a dryer and I felt blessed."
• "When we got married, we put all the extra towels away that we got at our wedding. That way, five/ten years later, we had new towels and didn't have to pay for them."

As I painted, I incorporated mental images of people's faces I know, including a former workmate of mine, Jennifer Goodman, and a friend who looks like a celebrity and goes by Mydonna. While I painted, other people joined me with their easels and canvases, including a large group of young men and women who painted in blacks and dark reds. My painting stood out because I used bright colors to emphasize the cheerfulness of the young couple and their hope for a sunny future. The other painters emphasized the bleakness of the world, where hopes are dashed and futures cut short.

The couple continued to open presents and guests ate finger food at a small buffet table. A photographer walked through occasionally and snapped photos that he posted instantly on facebook. Jennifer and Mydonna sent me video messages questioning whether nutmeg represented their facial skin tones because Jennifer felt her natural skin color was darker and Mydonna felt hers was lighter. They showed me what nutmeg looked like on their skin after applying makeup to try to match my painting's color to their palette of facial powder. Jennifer looked good while Mydonna looked ghastly.

After the paintings dried, the couple walked through the little art gallery set up and separated from the rest of the church activity center. They liked my painting and one by another painter, not so much because of the color scheme (in fact, they felt mine was too bright) but because of the mix of words and faces that both of us had painted.

The couple turned to me and thanked me for the wedding gift. I had not planned to give them the painting. I said I hoped to make a lithograph and sell prints of it, thinking that maybe there was a chance of my setting a new trend in nutmeg facial coloring (and if you know my belief in natural skin tones and dislike of covering faces with creams and powders, you know how far from the truth my last statement is).

When I displayed my dismay at giving away my painting, the couple looked at each other and then at me. They explained that my behavior was getting awfully close to that of the two women in Grey Gardens, both a real place and a cult, as well as some movies, where reality and fantasy had no hard edge or definition. I responded to them that the women of Grey Gardens suffered from social deprivation, possible in-breeding, and a local source of radon or other poison, including animal-related infections or food-borne diseases. They agreed and pointed to my house as a similar example of the influence of daily living on one's artistic output. The man asked me if I had considered the influence of my consumption of flax seed and banana on my daily beta blocker, metoprolol. Yikes!

Yesterday, I thought my day would be filled with my constant preparation for a comfortable second half of my life (with only 14,991 days left), a ritual I gladly embrace because of its unending inconstancy. Instead, I stepped into the world of the new generation, where old rituals give way to new ones. In my youth, a young couple followed a pre-scripted routine of pre-wedding events, staying within a well-defined role, using a limited number of responses, such as "Thank you," "Yes, sir," and "We appreciate you stopping by." We didn't know about beta blockers but had heard about tranquilizers and often knew the mothers taking them. We certainly wouldn't have handed a set of paints and a canvas to the tranquilized crowd and then later critique them at a pre-wedding party. But maybe that's what the last 25 years have given us - the freedom to speak our minds and express ourselves artistically.

Our time on this planet also includes increasing light "pollution," an eyesore to those of us who still like to stare into space at night and marvel at the universe of bright dots and blurs. A recent composite image of the North American continent at night makes me wonder what's become of our night sky. Years ago, I saw the aurora in north Alabama. I doubt I'll ever be able to see it here again, taking some of my natural wonder and awe away, and denying it to the next generation. I may be fading into the life of a Miss Havisham, Little Edie or any number of eccentric trailer park and backwoods occupants but that doesn't stop me from wishing the best for the next generation.

When we conserve and preserve our resources, we save the future for ourselves and others to enjoy. It's not an altruistic gesture. It's as real as it gets. One less street light in the neighborhood is one more falling star to wish upon. And maybe one less depressing article in National Geographic about the collapsing ecosystems around the world.