Chapter One

The faint cotton fresh smell of happy dog just inside from the hot sun preceeded BlackViolet the Studpuppie as he bounded through the dog door just off the kitchen.
He was the only studpuppie of Roses the Sweet Bitch who just about never left the feet of her mistress Lopie if she could wangle things that way.

In the big main front room of the house, meanwhile, Lopie wielded a mean artist's one-inch filbert paint brush as she jousted with her most recent painting.

From the speakers of the boom box on a shelf overlooking her littered desk came the wistful voice of a woman:

"Down in the valley, the valley so low
Hang your head over, hear the wind blow..."

Lopie, held a large generously spread painter's pallette in one hand and a loaded brush in the other as she glared at the surface before her.

Roses lay in the triangular spaces between the three feet of a large tripod of and easel on which a much too unwieldy painting in process writhed on the canvas measuring about three yards wide and two yards tall. This turmoil was securely clamped in place but to look at it would be nothing short of dizzying to anyone not prepared for something so charged with energy.

Yes, Roses, or at least Roses' long Golden Retriever's coat was dotted with dollops of a range of paint color, in case you were wondering. That it was always mottled this color and/or that never detered Roses from keeping guard at her chosen location near the foot her mistress.

"Hear the wind blow, dear, hear the wind blow..."

Lopie scooped up a brushful of orange-crimson the color of poppies in a spotlight in another brush as she stood looking at the howling forms occupying the surface of her painting.

Her name was Penelope but she was variously called Penn, Lope, El O Pea, or, more often than not Lopie by those who knew her best.

"...Writing this letter,
containing three lines..."

Why Lopie? Because she moved quickly, maybe, or because she rarely seemed to occupy one space for much more than an instant at any given time. That is, if she wasn't sleeping It so happens that she was an insomniac.

The surface appeared to be a simmering close-up shot of a brightly colored gumbo, solid forms cooking in a warm broth into which the red orange loaded brush in her hand carved what looked like slices and then chunks the color of sweet red peppers that knit the surface together in a way that gave the whole a new slant on what the image might represent. She might have stopped here to consider her next moves but no.

Not yet content, or more like: very much dissatisfied with where this painting had gone she gripped a dry brush and reached into the surface to remove sections of paint, three lines worth, this action exposed areas of slightly scumbled surface revealing an intricate pencil drawing under the paint.

Working wet on wet like this was her unnamed definition of art. Details were needed by the large forms already laid in carefully enough to ultimately deny not only definition but even any need for it. Not by any means a piece of work for the faint-hearted, it would take very little to turn this whole thing to mud. It was clear that she would have to stop, at least for a time, to take stock in the thing after a time away from it.

"Answer my question, will you be mine?
Will you be mine, dear, will you be mine?"

It wasn't, meanwhile, the product that she was most concerned with, it was what it might be if the real world, the limitations of all media, were not in contention with her meaning, her vision, her best intentions. These were clearest only in her dreams, rare that they ever occured.

Reaching into her paintings for answers was a habit of hers, and she was interested, otherwise, in not much else.

"Answer my question, will you be mine?"

The whole secret to the process had taken years of work to learn, Knowing When to Stop.

"Write me a letter, send it by mail
Send it in care of the Birmingham jail,
Birmingham jail, dear, Birmingham jail
Send it in care of the Birmingham jail

"Roses love sunshine, violets love dew
Angels in Heaven know I love you."

Sure, there was much else to occupy her time if she let it, but that was the daily mission, to avoid all or very nearly all that threatened to interfere with her painting.

"Know I love you, dear, know I love you
Angels in Heaven Know I love you."


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