Ranch Notes

Grocery Store Confessional

2012-01-17T17:50:00.000-08:00

I got into one of those random conversations with a near stranger in the local Trader Joe's that got me thinking as I walked away. The cashier was speaking to the customer on line ahead of me. The cashier was confessing her lack of attendance at the gym where the customer worked. I piped up and said I have to admit I have never had a gym membership. It's true I am not a gym person, I go occasionally but not religiously like some, I prefer my long rather meditative walks. The cashier cocked her head and said well you're lucky, you're naturally slim. I scoffed at this a bit and it got me thinking.

I am tall, at over 6 feet, I am 60% leg. I weigh between 182 and 190lbs depending on what season I am in. I do not consider myself slim, in fact I most often see myself as slightly pudgy. In reality I am not fat. I have a round belly but my arms and legs are long and fairly free of fat. I have a flat ass, I can't sit on hard chairs without my it hurting. I recognize that my perception of myself may not accurately reflect my physical reality but maybe that's a good thing. Honestly I try not to think about my body as I find my size sort of freaky.

I am not going to confess an eating disorder here, I don't have one. What I am realizing though is that I don't see food as convenient entertainment, I see it as a necessity and it's preparation an artful practice that is orderly and logical and subject to much control. I am not a faddist. I am trying to maintain a healthy body and I have strict beliefs about how to do that. I have that quote on my fridge and the fridges I frequent, "Eat food, not too much, mostly plants". I think before I put things in my mouth and there are many things I simply won't eat any longer. I buy whole foods, meat, cheeses, grains, fruits and vegetables. I have fewer and fewer presto fallback foods. I still get that feeling of wanting something naughty like a doughnut or cake, I generally want the bready or the doughy but if I can just think about it awhile in a rational way I can usually easily dissuade myself from the craving.

Consequently I think a lot about food and what I should eat to keep my intake well balanced and interesting. I have the big picture in my head of what I have generally been eating and what I have eaten on any given day. I carry the macro and the micro view around with me, always weighing the findings. Have I had enough beans or grains, enough cold water fish, too much dairy, too much salt, not enough protein? At the moment I am attempting to train myself away from white flour and sugar which when I went at it hard core before Christmas yielded a 5lb weight loss which was a pleasant side effect. More importantly I noticed that my general anxiety was much less severe because my blood sugar levels were more constant, this is what truly motivates me, a feeling of calm.

I have been accused of being controlling and it's probably true but in a world where we have so little control over most things I feel okay about controlling how I am feeling through diet and exercise. I am less concerned about how I look since my view is fairly distorted anyway it's hard to gauge. If I feel good hopefully I look all right and if my 501's fit me that's ideal. It's funny to realize that others make these assumptions about a person's body. If only that cashier knew that I spend my day weighing and considering what to eat making sure never to have too much, denying myself all sorts of things in the name of physical and emotional enlightenment.

Reading and Writing

2012-01-06T12:04:00.000-08:00

My main resolution this year is to read more, a lot more. This will mean fewer meaningless blog posts and much less facebooking (thank christ). I bought a Kindle Fire and among the books I have on it is the title shown above. It's a brick of a book so lends itself well to a digital format. I am well into it and find myself reading late into the night and early in the morning. My mind is trained on the story and the time passes without being distracted by my own random thoughts. It feels great I have to say. It's like learning to breath underwater for extended periods and then before you know it you have developed gills and you stop coming to the surface at all. This is what I want, total immersion.

FYI, my goal for this blog is to write less frequent longer posts. I have to develop my ability to write in a more sustained way and develop an idea fully rather than just flit around here and there. Stay tuned.

Coming in 2012

2011-12-30T13:34:00.000-08:00

Am hoping to lend a hand with some set design/construction for this project this Spring. My first foray into the world of theater and set design. Please pledge if you can, every little bit helps.

In conclusion

2011-12-24T20:03:00.000-08:00

The three of us, Tofino 2011

Christmas eve, the year is winding down. We're watching videos from the first years Mark and I were together, almost a decade now, I am overwhelmed by the complicated feelings of what is now past and what must lay ahead. Pearl was little, my parents looked younger, my property looked more wild. Time marches on, so do I. Am thinking about the year ahead now and what I would like to accomplish or at least inch myself toward. More writing, less slacking. Better eating, more moving around. More reading, more learning, greater understanding. More time with those I love, less time worrying about the things I have no control over. Maybe some surfing, certainly more walking and bike riding, better knitting, more complicated sewing, greater ease.

2011 was fine. I met some goals, wrote more words, raised and butchered the chickens, let a few things go, welcomed a new life. It was all good, another year filled with good memories, small trips. It's an extraordinary life this and I have learned to be kind to myself and those around me, so I will continue to do as I have done and move incrementally toward the person I want to be.

Cheers to you and yours. See you on the flipside.

Saturday with the folks

2011-12-18T23:11:00.000-08:00

I guess it's in the air. Everyone's parents are getting old, failing and decrepit. Our roles as parents and children are crossing over one another at the dividing line. We make suggestions and come up with solutions, shouting them from where we stand, our minds and bodies still keeping pace, mostly. Saturdays we visit Eddy first, now in care, it's depressing. We stay a shamefully short amount of time, but how long can you sit watching someone sleep? We move west to the city and see my dad, now 84 and his wife. My parents I say and pause, my mother is dead. My stepmother, now my only female parent has Alzheimers or some other dementia-like disease, and my father are the parents of record. They are one unit, bound tighter now that she is dependent on him entirely and he is more dependent on us, our open arms, palms raised up offering help with anything, everything. We eat lunch with them, bake cookies, clean up here and there. We are jovial and encouraging, helping her with the words she can no longer connect with, seeing that he is not becoming overwhelmed with this new position of care giving he has been thrust into. After a time we go outside with him discreetly and discuss things that need to be discussed while the dogs pull and sniff around the block that surrounds the house, circumnavigating the island of their despair. On the way home we stop to see Mark's mother who is the best off of all of them fiercely independent still and able to mother us a little which feels like a relief because we are not ready to cut loose that generational buffer between us and our own eventual demise. At night I dream again and again of my mother and relive her illness, she is well and then not well and then dead again and I forget how it happened but I am grateful she comes to visit me and I suppose it will be this way with all of them and then me and on and on.

Gift Ideas

2011-12-13T14:39:00.000-08:00

I shamelessly encourage you to visit my Etsy site. Enjoy!

Day 81

2011-12-01T13:11:00.001-08:00

I am not one for wallowing or whining. I have been unable to write because I have fallen into horrendous laziness. I mean to write and I wake up early to do it when the house is quiet but I refuse to leave my bed and then I decide I can write in bed, if that is what it takes, but I don't write much because I know inside that one needs to sit up properly or even stand if possible and somehow I convince myself to stay in bed and an hour passes and I think I need a little nap so I turn over and then I am done. When I wake up the next day and cannot reach the notebook I write in I decide that maybe I should be writing short pieces or god forbid finish the other 9 things I have on the go and the bed feels warm and I decide to get up and be a super mom for an hour and then go to work. Everyday the little emails come from the writing group and everyday they are right on. I don't know the whole the story yet and maybe I don't care but I do because the last time I wrote I discovered a love triangle that was not there before and that was interesting and I felt curious but then the bad me drank 4 glasses of wine and stoked the fire and got under the quilt and fell asleep until the middle of the night and went to bed and read the rest of "War of Art" and realized that my territory is my work, I am happiest there and I just happen to have a lot of it right now and so the story trudges on. It takes me a long time to do things, we know this. Many things I have done and finished and liked took me a long time to do. I might not finish the story in the prescribed remaining 9 days even though I keep telling myself I will suddenly begin to go hard and race to the finish line my pages flying around me. It won't happen that way. I will take a walk each day and find time here and there to write and rewrite and to think about the whole thing in pieces and I will not sling mud at myself and tell myself horrible things about my habits and tendencies, instead I will re read all the emails and be curious about the story and one day it will resolve itself and the whole experience will be framed as positive because it was the first time and I took it on and I kept going.

Thanksgiving

2011-11-24T07:47:00.001-08:00

The day came. And it was different than what I thought it would be. It didn't happen where I thought it would, the cast was slightly different. It was cold, I called that. I had knives and gloves and bags and I had a clear mind. A resolved mind, or a resigned mind. I checked my mind in somewhere else, there would be no complicating this process with how I felt about it. It would be a mechanical series of events. Slit the throat while holding the bird firmly between my knees. Lift the flapping bird carefully not to bruise the wing meat and place it head down into the metal funnels, tie the feet, let it bleed. Repeat, until the rack of funnels was full. No more room at the inn. Move to the next step. Untie the feet and lift the limp bird up and carry it to the scalding tank, where for 3 or 4 seconds I swish the bird from side to side, lifting and dunking, watching the accumulated shit balls stuck in the chest feathers mostly dissolve away. Lift the now dripping bird up and test pull a few wing feathers out to make sure the scalding has been effective. If needed, dip again, swish again. Carry the bird, always by the feet to the plucker. Resting on the edge of the plucker, cut off the feet, neatly, at the knee. Let the bird slide into the plucker until there are 4 or 5 inside. Turn on the plucker. Step away and slit more throats while kneeling on the frozen ground. Tie and untie, dip, swish, cut, pluck until all 25 birds are heaped into a clean white plastic container. Next step. Evisceration. With knives rinsed and sharpened and new gloves on we begin to gut the birds in unison standing next to each other at the evisceration rack. Evisceration station. First, cut off the oil gland which is below the anus, next, cut around the anus and gently pull out the guts. The guts are warm and unless they are punctured are not that disgusting, I am not thinking about anything beyond getting this job done neatly. Pull the guts out, the heart, the lungs, the liver. Save the livers and hearts and some necks. I am not being as thrifty as I should be, my feet are getting wet. If it weren't for the greenhouse where this is taking place, we'd all be much colder. Once cleaned the birds rest in a cold bath of water. There is ice on top, this is a good thing. They float in the water and look cold but like meat and that is a good thing. They are no longer living creatures, they have stepped across the threshold and have become food. This is a good thing. We bag them up. My fingers are numb and I can't open the ziploc bags. The bags, once loaded are pleasingly heavy. We clean up what we need to. I wash the feet and set them aside in a bucket and then bag them up. I hose feathers into a pile and we scrub blood from the metal bleed rack. It's done and we go home and get warmed up. I let myself think again, and the feelings I have the most of are related to accomplishment and righteousness. Once you have killed something with the intention of eating it you have crossed your own threshold from bystander to hunter.

Wasteful

2011-11-18T09:49:00.001-08:00

There is no picture for this post. If there were you wouldn't like it. The distended anus of a chicken as it propels itself forward shitting one final shit as its heart stops and its nerves fire one last time and it lands way off in the corner of the pen causing me to grab at it with the pitch fork. All I can think is what a waste, 3 months of feeding and it can't be eaten. The butchering takes preparation and will happen in two days on another farm near here. If I were a farm wife, I'd know what to do in this situation. I might even have an over-sized pot boiling on the wood cook-stove up in the farmhouse, sharpened knives at the ready. 15 or 20 minutes and it would be ready to cook for my hungry family. If I were a farm wife I wouldn't have on a Pashmina scarf under my chartreuse green coat, I wouldn't be worried about feathers and blood and guts. I might even have pigs that I could throw the entrails to like little treats or god forbid the entire chicken if it were suspect enough. I am not a farm wife, I am a designer and I have no time to pluck a chicken today because I need to finish a rush job, butchering a suddenly dead chicken was not on my docket for the day. Even still, I feel the futility as the limp body heavy with meat gets tossed into the woods, hopefully some other animal will discover it and eat it. Happy early Thanksgiving.

Today, a link

2011-11-10T10:21:00.001-08:00

In writing my novel I am being pulled into an arena that is all about a standard form of story telling and because I am inexperienced I am following it. It is like learning a language I may never speak or understand and I feel lost and foreign in the face of it but I am sticking with it. I am reminded of Lydia Davis who when I was introduced to her writing style felt like a sign from the universe that maybe I could be a writer too. While I understood that reality is what you make around yourself and not something that is thrust upon you I had not been able to translate that to the way I saw words and stories. I am becoming more comfortable with this notion and Lydia Davis is the embodiment of all that is possible in the realm of story telling.

Manifesto

2011-11-09T18:02:00.000-08:00

I am not a long suffering mother. I am a person who, if you piss me off with your one word answers will stop speaking to you. I will make your supper and stoke the fire and do many of the jobs you said you'd do because I understand this one true thing. You are a child. Even though you wear a push -up bra and make-up, you are little more than a baby in a growing body and you know nothing and you know everything. And it is my job to push back now and then and then hug you 15 minutes later when you crawl out of your room knowing you were wrong or if not wrong, 13. And I don't need to forgive you because I was never mad at you in the first place I was just pushing back because that was what was needed in that moment when I asked you those questions. You are a good kid and I am a dedicated parent and none of this feels like suffering because I won't let it.

Are you experienced?

2011-11-06T11:37:00.000-08:00

Meat birds at 5 Weeks

It's Sunday here where I sit, somewhere it's Monday and I will be thrust into that reality soon enough but until then I will enjoy Sunday. As I sit and write this in my espresso induced sweat my head is full and strangely empty all at once. I feel calm mostly but occasionally have a flash of things that need my attention and I try to add them to the list for the coming week, things I must do, food I must cook, emails I must respond to. For now though we are listening to Neil Young and my husband is sitting across from me the way he does at his house and we have our laptops spread out on the kitchen table and the kid is recuperating down the hall with a semi nasty cough watching endless movies on cable-TV.

I have done nothing to document the chicks development as I had wanted to and time is leaving this idea in its dust. I imagined pages of quaint gestural drawings, spontaneous captivating paintings and daily photos. I even considered building a small lit cove in which I could drop a chicken or two for a couple of real money shots but I have not done any of it. In its place is growing disappointment and harsh words directed inward to the file of things I just never got to. They are six weeks old now, we are on the home stretch, in the next 3 weeks we will organize the butchering day and even though I never thought I had the stomach for this type of activity (and maybe I don't) I am willing myself to fall headlong into the experience. Why not. Why shouldn't I attempt to butcher 27 meat birds at home with borrowed chicken butchering equipment? This has been the work of farm women for millennia why should I be squeamish and spared.

In casual conversation regarding the butchering of various commonly farmed animals the question of what to do with the plethora of nasty bits that we refined North Americans deem un-consumable, it occurred to me that I would be in possession of a treasure trove of chicken feet, a delicacy in the Chinese community. One of the strange features of the Cornish Cross breed are their huge feet and thick legs. In an effort not to waste them I inquired about eating them to my Chinese friend who's old mother is visiting soon. I half expected her to be completely grossed out but instead she waxed poetic about the wonderful experience of eating them as a child, their fried exterior concealing a delicious gelatinous interior. She went on to tell how she had gone with her mother to Chinatown to the chicken butcher where you could choose a live bird and have it butchered on the spot, carrying home the recently live bird in a shopping bag.

So my new fantasy is that this old woman from China via Los Angeles, who has been described as looking like Nelsen Mandela will join us on butchering day perhaps wielding her own cleaver and be our guide. Women working together to shouts in Cantonese and English, and cries of the chickens as their throats are slit while the pile of beautiful yellow legs grows to be taken home and enjoyed for Thanksgiving.

Wanting

2011-10-22T19:05:00.000-07:00

I am struck this afternoon by a young Libyan woman expressing her joy at Muammar Gadaffi's death. She said "We can want anything now". What struck me is that living in a democracy as I do I have never been in a situation where there were things I could not have. The only thing between me and the things I desired was usually hard work and I have generally worked hard. Lately I have been faced with a question that I can't seem to answer, it has risen out of the work I am doing on the novel I am writing. The question is: what does the hero want, and so I invert this question and wonder what do I want. An old friend resurfaced this week and she expressed her want as a desire to thrive. I keep running up against the question and I can't quite drill it down. Sometimes I think it stems from a lack of interest in anything or an interest in everything, it might be both, a plethora of choice has numbed me. I am happy doing very little, watching the meat birds eating is pleasant, so is watching the laying hens peck around. I am pensive and quiet, I enjoy that. I want to do what I want to do, not what I have to do. This is the challenge, trying to frame the want in a positive way, I want this, not, I don't want that. I don't want to die for example. I don't want to have to work for money forever. I want to work at what I want to work at. All the other stuff I have. A family, a good relationship, a place of my own. Maybe that's it, I have what I want, wanting more would be gluttony.

I realize in writing all this that picture for this post is rather meaningless except that it's what I am working on at the moment. It's a Rowan Yarns pattern by Kaffe Fassett. I cheaped out and didn't by the prescribed Rowan Yarn, it was just too expensive but the stuff I chose may be too soft, not structural enough, but we'll see. Looking at it here I actually don't mind it and some blocking will help. I am learning the hard way to go faster with these projects so that the details are handled consistently. I think I made the right front panel slightly longer than the left. Asymmetry is a look perhaps.

Beyond all of this I was invited to a birth this week of an old and dear friend so at the moment I am reveling in the amazing process of her tiny son appearing in a bath of water not 36 hours ago. My husband is flying home tonight after 10 days away and I am looking forward to being in his company again and hearing his stories. I am struck, struck by all of the love and connection I have witnessed this week. I guess if I wanted anything it would just be more of the same.

Friday Happiness

2011-10-14T09:02:00.000-07:00

Here is something cheerful for friday, a cat in a sweater courtesy of the good people at The Yarn Monkey. If this doesn't cheer you up instantly you are probably dead, get off the computer. Mark is away so I am off to have a visit with Eddy, today I will read to him from the book I have been grueling through. I had a surprise root canal yesterday and although it was a bit horrifying to learn about the whole process the total lack of pain I am experiencing today is so good. A person like me who spends a lot of time in her head should not have to encounter any more pain than the pain I imagine I am in. Happy Friday, get your cat in a sweater. I am thinking of making one for one of the meat birds whose feathers are slow to come in. Cheers!

Vine Maple Wood

2011-10-12T13:32:00.000-07:00

The woods are wet and slimy and as I walk past I wonder is there something to be done with Vine Maple branches. Shall I put the call out via Facebook? Can they be woven into furniture or other useful household items, can I make a coffee pot or a pressure cooker, can I conjure skis and boots for winter time leisure pursuits? I fear though, that the answer is wreaths. You can bend them into slimy circles and hang them on the front of your rustic home in the woods and they will do nothing but hang there through these winter seasons and in spring wasps will build nests in them and eventually they will come down and next fall I will think the same thing again, can anything be done with Vine Maple wood?

Light and rain.

2011-10-11T10:08:00.000-07:00

Wrote 1200 words this morning. It's raining again but I actually feel okay about it. The dread I felt yesterday going into the barn to clean the chicks pen dissipated quickly, somehow the thick mat of shit and straw did not strike me as that disgusting. This morning they were all hungry so I just fed them and cleaned their water, I will change their bedding later on. I checked in on my laying hens 3 and found them still roosting in the dark coop. Lazy wenches. I went and got a light for them and set the timer, it will come on at 5am when I get up to write and stay on until noon. I watched them as they adjusted to the light coming to life almost instantly and went outside to scratch around. I even gave them a few cock-a-doodle-dos to bring home the point. The dog shot me a weird look. I guess the new darkness has it's effect on all of us. I went to sleep at around 7:30pm last night, a trend I really don't want to fall into but something happens to me after dinner when the darkness comes early. I fall into a low level temporary depression. I have things I want to do but it's nearly impossible to motivate myself and I can only see the merits of lying down. Mondays are trouble for me anyway, I am blue after the weekend with Mark and not quite in full swing for a week of mothering. It passes, today is better. The rain has subsided so it's time to get out for walk, honestly I really like this life and the pace I have set for myself.

Not much.

2011-10-09T17:17:00.000-07:00

This is all I can safely say. Tuesday I begin writing the novel in earnest and I can't talk about the story to anyone. I have to hold it close to my breast like a sacred object. In the meantime I will try and write about other stuff like the freakish chickens I am raising and our rising sadness about Eddy who is now living in care and knows it isn't right. We're all dying but his case is more acute. To tide you over here is a picture of me with my new love interest.

Untitled

2011-10-05T11:03:00.000-07:00

So it's day 13 of the meat bird project and day 24 of the 90 Day Novel. I hope I don't confuse the two. I jut moved the chicks out of their stock tub into a child's swimming pool which felt like pure genius to me as the tractor I have for them felt too big and drafty. The pool offers some additional protection. I had one death yesterday, probably from a heart attack due to rapid growth. These birds are genetic freaks, their thick post like legs tell the tale. I continue as I am told, to imagine the world of my story, the characters are emerging like slow moving zombies out of the primordial ooze. I am still distracted so I am reading the The War of Art which is all about resistance. It encouraged me to blog today because as we know too well not blogging is akin to becoming constipated. I have issues but I am trying to train my mind away from them and toward the world of the story. It's more interesting.

9 weeks to meat

2011-09-28T17:53:00.000-07:00

The chicks arrived last Thursday just as we left for Oregon in the pouring rain. My partner in crime collected them and got them all cozy in the stock tank I had set up for them in my little barn. It's helpful having another person invested in this rather dodgey project. Chicks are fragile and the whole process of raising them feels precarious to me. I once drowned 25 birds by accident early on in the process when they were small and unable to stay warm. My waterer lost suction in the night and filled the metal stock tank with water, just enough to soak each little downy bird and they struggled to pile themselves up on top of each other to reach the light but it was all for naught and in the morning when I discovered the mishap they were just a wet mass of dead chicks. I was horrified. I stood in the barn and screamed for help, no one came. My daughter was 3ish at the time, I had to keep her from seeing them, the pile of transparent limp bodies, their eyes shut but visible through thin skin. I carry this horror with me and each time I go to check on them I feel a slight panic rise up in me as I step across the threshold of the barn. So far they are okay. I don't need to be caring for 30 chicks at the moment but I am, and in a way maybe it's good for me. In an effort to outrun the winter doldrums I have packed my fall beyond recognition so that everyday is filled with multiple activities. At night I write my list and in the morning I follow it like an automaton forcing myself to think less and do more. Surprisingly it seems to be working. I feel okay, less gray than usual and more energetic despite giving up my new found love, coffee. It would be nice not to have to work so hard at feeling reasonable but this is who I am so I have to try new things as my brain chemistry changes. I changed my diet recently too at the suggestion of my naturopath. My blood pressure is still high and at the moment my head is pounding but that is just today. This too shall pass. There is something purposeful about being needed by 30 tiny birds that you will one day butcher and slather in BBQ sauce. For today they need food and clean shavings and to be warm and I can handle that.

Brief Explanation from Inside

2011-09-26T13:47:00.000-07:00

What the hell was she thinking? The goal was simple. To take a writing course. Only this schmuck, who is incapable of thought deeper than water collecting inside a contact lens can't do it. First of all she didn't consider that writing a novel in 90 days means you need to have a shred of an idea for a story. Second of all she is not doing the homework. She thinks about the story a lot but it's in such a superficial way that I am pretty sure nothing will ever come of it. Poor thing doesn't care enough about anything to make it work.What it comes down to is she doesn't care about what makes people tick enough to pay attention long enough to gather any clues about dilemma, conflict, transformation. And now the blog is suffering too, I'd cry if I had eyes. All she is excited about these days is going for little trips in the vintage trailer and being outside puttering around clipping the bushes and checking on the little chicks and walking, always wanting to walk. Occasionally she thinks about the bills she has to pay and what kind of paint to buy to paint the chuck-box she built. And now winter is coming and it has begun to rain and soon she is going to want to sit by the fire and knit constantly. She's not a writer. I know. I live inside her head.

Forgiveness

2011-09-13T10:02:00.000-07:00

Dear Father,
It's been 11 days since my last blog post. Please forgive me as I have had a lot on my mind and while I try to maintain a healthy writing practice there are many influences beyond my control that seem to unite against me. Please forgive me lord. Eddy is in the hospital and we are all sort of stunned and not sure what is next for him. I don't think he is dying, I think he is just profoundly tired and I can relate dear lord for I am tired too and although I have much work to do I mostly just want to lay on my couch and drink wine. The weather has been fine and I wanted to thank you for that but it makes me sleepy in the afternoon and it makes taking long walks difficult as I freckle so badly dear lord and I know that the devil did that to me not you because you you made folks like Selma Hayek and she doesn't freckle so it must be that the devil is in me. Speaking of the devil. I need to ask forgiveness for making little images of the devil because I adore his pointed little horns and his sharp beard and the mustache, oh how I love the mustache. But really I need to beg for forgiveness because I am wasting time here when I should be working. I will abuse myself later in your name, hope that's cool. xo me p.s., maybe pass this along to Mother Mary, in hindsight she is probably who I meant to talk to.

Happy Maniac

2011-09-02T10:26:00.000-07:00

Moving right along. The kid is back at school and I am looking forward to the fall and feeling hopeful and inspired. By Rosh Hashanah I'll have a new crown on the lower left side of my mouth and I am not missing the symbolism here. I have not been able to bite down on much lately due to my fragile state and like a true manic person on a long awaited upswing I am going to take on way more than I probably should in response to all the down time I took over the summer. So here goes. I am going to embark on a 90 day novel writing course, seemed like a good idea and now I have committed myself mentally to it. Work is picking back up just in time, the bills are piling up and the one scary thing I have been forcing myself to face most days is my checking account balance. Additionally I have just ordered 30 meat birds in chick form. It will take 9 weeks to raise them and I have no idea who will butcher them, god I hope it's not me. My tenant is going in with me and she is a brave and hardy soul so maybe I can follow her lead. Saw a dead deer at the side of the road which reminds me to finish the story I am working on, it's about a deer but also the dead deer is a reminder that time is not endless. I have decided not to worry about my elderly parents going to Europe for two weeks. Instead I will focus on my job of looking after their ill behaved Cocker-Spaniel. I finished my self portrait. Still not entirely sure how I feel about it but will list it on my Etsy site just to see if anyone bites. I hope you are all well and biting down hard on things that you desire.

September Manifesto

2011-08-29T10:56:00.000-07:00

Because I didn't have to, I spent the weekend working in my studio. Since January I have been working on a series of self portraits in an effort to give myself a vehicle for experimentation beyond my daily work. I began by taking photos of myself and then making paintings using water colors. In the beginning the paintings were small now they are bigger. I have never been adept with water color but I did it anyway. Each piece has resulted in a satisfying surprise. Needless to say the creative process or the process of making something is mysterious. You never know how things will turn out and often this uncertainty stops me from making anything and based on the number of self help books on the subject I am not the only one. I am still trying to keep connected to my morning pages and the self portrait series has given me some clearly defined parameters in which to make visual work. I bought a bunch of wood mounted Linonelum blocks a few months ago with a mind to create some lino-cuts but the mood never quite struck me until a few days ago. The pieces above are some of the results. I intend to add 2 more layers to the piece which will involve some type. I am not sure how I feel about the cartoon-ish nature of the drawing but I do like the authentically thoughtful facial expression. The main thing about these pieces is to not question them too heavily. I am trying to accept first that they are valid because of their mere existence and I will think more deeply about them once I have a lot of them to consider.

Humanity Failing

2011-08-26T19:34:00.000-07:00

I feel my faith in humanity slipping away. I am speaking in the most general terms of course. I feel old as I think this, but the youth today are completely lackluster. They are poorly dressed, soft, and dull in their thinking. They are easily led and prone to violence.

On our annual camping trip I overheard such a youth speaking. She was the female of the species, voluptuous but otherwise physically crude. She had died hair, pre-straightened for the outing to the lake. She was with friends, another couple and her companion who was another stellar example of the point I am trying to make. They were messing around as young, drunk people will do on hot summer days, on remote lakes. They were talking as they messed, floating in big plastic inflatable rings, oblivious to the majestic natural setting. He noticed she had a tattoo stretching the length of her exposed side, dipping into and out of her white over-taxed bikini, at both ends. It was some sort of script, not English, not an Asian dialect, perhaps First Nations but not entirely. He asked her what it said. She said " I forget" then giggled a bit "I got it a long time ago". I wanted to yell at her "You better make something up to tell people otherwise you're going to be exposed as a complete idiot for your whole pathetic life!" I thought better of it and went back to ready my book.

Later on at the same spot some young people gathered with their kids and dogs and chaos for the afternoon. The dogs fetched and were obedient for the most part but at the end of the day when they had all packed up and slowly disappeared, one little dog got left behind, just left behind. One little dog named Duchess sitting there sort of bewildered but perhaps a little relieved to be free of it's negligent caregivers, grateful to not be eaten by their Pit Bulls.

I'm worried there are multiple generations of people who were not raised by anyone with any sense. The spawn arrived, was wrapped in synthetic blankets with Disney motifs and then left in front of televisions and dog bowls fighting for crumbs with Pit Bulls and Chihuahuas. In order to survive, the girls got sexy and the boys got violent and no one learned to read or plant a garden. I saw these people at the County Fair pushing their baby strollers, tattoos on display. The women all looking vacant, the men looking mean and sure enough the night after we were there, there was a shooting in between the midway and the milking displays. No one was killed but a young gang member was arrested. It was shocking in a non-surprising way. Walking on the midway while my kid road the crappy rides I felt like I was walking through a horror film where the art director had done an excellent job of finding all of the most-malformed and horrific examples of this sub race of humans. Only it wasn't a movie set, it was real and that's why I feel sort of sick at the moment.

I foolishly read some of the comments left on the story about the shooting. Of course the conversation went very quickly to issues of racism and immigration. I feel the problem stems from a feeling of deep hopelessness but not the sort that I suffer from which is only one side of a coin, the other side of which is filled with incredible options, kept separate solely by my own apathy. These youth live in a world without the smallest knowledge of any of these options, their hopelessness unrecognized as even a state beyond their own reality and the realities of those around them.

They need support, someone to raise them up with compassion and expose them to a world where they matter. I am not sure how to do this but I am going to think about it. Yesterday I apologized to a young man who upon hearing my apology told me to go fuck myself. I was sort of surprised but also felt for him. What a world to live in where you can't even accept the smallest of kind gestures. I felt bad for a bit as I walked back home feeling like the world was changing and that I would never want to walk along my road again. I don't want to make that choice. I want to be out in the world with the freaks and the malcontents so I will go again and when I see this guy on the road I will wave at him in my friendly way because that's the world I want to live in.

Looking forward

2011-08-19T09:59:00.000-07:00

I was in this place again with my little family feeling all grateful and happy like eating a comforting and healthful soup. No news, no internet, no endless facebook updates, no regrets. Another summer is coming to a close, like a good novel it had it's ups and downs. I am still fragile, more so than I probably care to admit but I think change does this to me. Things are changing. Fall is coming, the kid is changing, the old man is changing, my parents are changing, it's a lot to reconcile in 2 short months. Fall is a time of renewal too and I am eternally optimistic about everything, including my ability to rebound to the person I want to be again. I have plans to reno my bedroom, sewing projects, knitting projects and more portraits that perhaps I could show somewhere, someday. I really believe that we can all be happy in spite of the trajectory we are all on, hurtling toward infirmity and sure death. As long as there are calm lakes to swim in I'll be fine.

Episode

2011-08-05T14:40:00.000-07:00

It was 45 minutes before he began to be responsive. We ate our hamburgers because we didn't know what else to do and they were cooked. One of us would get up and check on him periodically. The time passes slowly and initially you are calm and do what has worked in the past, but then more time passes and we began to think maybe this is it, this is how it ends but you don't stop yet, you keep reacting just in case. We were moving around the house not really talking to one another but in our minds we were both concocting strategies for what to do. Eventually the ER was the answer and that's where Mark took him, only by the time we called an ambulance and arranged to meet them just inside the Canadian border he was coming around, nicely. He squeezed my hand when I asked him to but would not speak. In the car as they pulled out of the driveway I waved at Eddy and he waved back, like nothing was wrong. He was fine but the trip to the emergency could not be aborted and so Mark kept on, making up for the other times when we did not take him perhaps. At midnight they were back home and we were there to meet them, having cleaned up the dinner dishes and crossed the border into Canada, with the dogs and everything else.

At the doctor today Eddy sits looking down and we talk about him like he isn't there, but he is there. He looks mad at times, and scared at other times. He says very little or nothing. We learned from the doctor that when he has one of these episodes we need to elevate his feet. This is good simple advice and it makes me feel empowered for when this happens again. Mark is not so sure and he requests a change to some different meds to try and avoid the seizure all together. We went years without any of these episodes and now they are quite frequent. His state is precarious, his circulation poor, he is slow to respond to much stimulus, he is forgetting how to eat, but he's alive. So we go along with him moment by moment, ill-equipped as we are, our resolve propping him up. It's all we can do.

Painted

2011-08-02T17:35:00.000-07:00

Because you have all been so good and have not stood too close to me, and have not been too needy in general, I have made a painting. I actually had a strategy with this one but it does not behoove me to explain it to you. Because you are wise enough, you might intuit it. Wise you are and good also. I am calming down nicely, doing some things around the house again, feeling less out of control, noticing how much I like order and putting things into an orderly state, engaging my hands. Whatever it is, a mania, an obsession. I never go too long doing things, allowing myself to be distracted away from my work and other commitments. I designed a whole book in 4 days. That has to count for something. The in-laws came to stay at the weekend and they are such good company I was really cheered up and I have been sewing again. Words are difficult just now and the stories are not stories, rather they are disconnected lines and I wonder if I should just stick to pictures. I swam in the lake yesterday while the dogs thrashed and barked and it felt like how I dream summer should be.

Quit yer crying

2011-07-28T09:25:00.000-07:00

The pity party is over. Time to recycle the empties, clean the ashtrays, and wipe the sticky tears off the floor. My bed is made, my clothes are put away, my room is tidy. There is solid ground under my oversize feet, I have much to be thankful for and all the rest that I have no control over can fuck off. It's sunny in the PNW so maybe I'll go for a swim in the lake.

Remission

2011-07-22T19:41:00.000-07:00

So let's just say I was losing it. It was subtle. I kept it to myself but I was losing it. It felt like melting. And then without warning it started to come back. I regained it. Somewhere between pouring concrete, and waiting for the kids dance class to end. I had been talking to the new neighbors who were there too, and are recently in love, and I got carried away listening to them. He was standing behind her, hands on her hips the whole time and it felt good to just see them be in love and it made me think about what I have and I started to feel good. Love is so good and we are lucky to have it. And then the CSA box arrived and I felt good about the good food I eat, I made a big Greek salad and tzanziki and I visited a sage a friend who has known me a long time. A person who I can be myself around, my whole self, and it crept back. She suggested swimming might help and being with people. I have no idea what IT is but when I feel like I am losing grip on IT I get so worried and perplexed. How did I let IT go. Like those teeth dreams from college, where they are suddenly all rotten and you are in your mouth, peering out. And you think FUCK, how did I let this happen. Anyway, I am going to go see the doctor and sort out this BP thing. I have been so worried about it and that is maybe what's causing me to feel so horrendous. My sage friend has a sage husband who is very good-natured and I am entertaining the idea of changing my thinking to be positive all the time and not to worry but it's hard because as women we have the evil force of hormones to deal with and they are unruly like that Damien kid in the Omen. You can't just love it away, sometimes you seriously need to drive a stake through IT.

Concrete

2011-07-20T10:57:00.000-07:00

On top of everything else I made a concrete pad over the weekend. It was Pearl's birthday so I waited until the sleepover guests went home and then I began. It was raining but I was undeterred in my lightweight raincoat, one of three raincoats I own and I pondered as the climate deteriorates, er changes we will need different clothes to function well in the gray moist world. I built the frame first, 4 feet by 6 and set it in place. I filled it with rocks and metal leftover from the two double box springs I tried to burn poor-white-trash-style on the burn pile. The cheap fabric melted away, the wood charred but the metal remained. I was pleased by how easily the metal springs came off the superstructure, no tools required beyond my gloved hands. The frame for the concrete was big and I underestimated the concrete it would require to fill it, so after mixing 4-60lb bags I stopped, took off my rain coat and started collecting rocks to fill the voids. I have a surplus of rocks here and so off I went and picked them up one after another until the bucket I was collecting them in weighed just enough to carry. I would dump each one and I found myself saying "just nine more loads" each time. I made about 2 dozen trips looking for mid size rocks, digging into the muddy earth with my hands and pulling them up, moving from spot to spot letting the rocks decide my path. On Monday I rested. On Tuesday I mixed up 11 more bags of concrete one by one and filled the spaces not taken up by the rocks from Sunday. At 4:30 it was done. Mark helped me screet the surface with a 2 x 4 and then he finished the edges because that is what he does and I am beyond grateful. I went and looked at the finished slab this morning and felt quite pleased that it is done and although the surface is flat and smooth I hold the memory of what lies beneath.

Derailed

2011-07-13T09:21:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it just doesn't pay to go out in public. I was supposed to give blood yesterday but my Blood pressure was off the charts so they sent me home. The funniest part about it was the nice guy who took my vitals trying to make sense of me telling him I was anxious and nervous. He reminded me that I knew them and that I should feel okay but what he couldn't see or hear were the alarms going off inside in my body fueled by hormones, lack of sleep, feelings of fear and confusion and all of it lined up like a parade marching band of all cymbals clanging and marching and no one in step and I was smiling and nodding and acting like maybe it could be okay but my heart was pounding and that part he could clearly hear. He was right to send me home. I needed to rest. My body knew it needed to rest. As stated here previously I do not vacation well and I had just returned from an entire week away from home. An entire week of not sleeping well, eating crap and drinking more booze and less water than normal, and not exercising or doing any of the activities I had planned to do to quell my black soul. So there I sat behind a vinyl partition, pulse racing, once again choosing duty to a faceless blood blank over my own well being. My self which often feels like a flaccid appendage of my body seems to cause so much trouble at times and needs so much fucking attention and care that it's astounding. So I came home and instead of throwing myself on the couch I went to my office and thought about doing things I like and I made a sketch of a Chuckbox that I could build from wood and glue and it would keep me organized while camping and it felt like a good compromise between my hands and my head, and for my heart I will remember to sleep, to read, and paint, and walk or run so that I don't explode, at least not just yet. This helped too.

My Traveling Companion

2011-07-06T08:42:00.000-07:00

Riding east on the WestCoast Express June/2011

I have been trying to compose an appropriately poignant post about my daughter, about the great depth of feeling I have for her and the rewards and trials of being a parent. But the time moves so quickly and I find I barely have time to think the whole post through, I am in the trenches as it were just living with her and enjoying it immensely. School is out now so we are on this odyssey called summer vacation wherein I try to be dedicated to near non-stop fun while still trying to work full-time. Summer, like life, is fleeting. I have never been a good playmate mom, I am impatient at best but I have always tried to just spend time with this child, slow myself down and expose her to the world in the best way I know how. In the summer that means visiting family and friends, camping, boating, riding bikes, reading and eating things we generally avoid in the off-season. I am making up for lost time I suppose. When she was 3, my husband and I split up and so began a 50/50 split of her time between us. Split straight down the middle, which was very limiting and to my mind not what I signed up for. One tries to adapt and make best use of the 50% without complaint, but it did wear on me and I felt like I got short changed until abut 18 months ago when the schedule was changed and she was with me more. Recently things changed again, and she was with me all the time and so that is what we have settled into and it feels so good to me. She is a wonderful person, not perfect but I never expected that. I feel like we have achieved the state I most desired as a parent, that we are traveling companions. She is a great traveler, she's adaptable and curious and she likes to tell stories about the things we see along the way, either from everyday life of the special trips we make like the time we just spent with my dad and stepmother. I am loading her up with interesting memories so that when she is grown and has her own kids she can look back at the crazy car trips with Mark and I and model her own childrens experiences after them as Mark and I are doing with her. She is a willing companion and I am so grateful to have her along.

Thursday Song

2011-06-30T10:49:00.000-07:00

Thursday already. I had a vague notion I might blog everyday this week, oh well, best laid plans and all that. I also thought I wouldn't drink any wine, you know as an experiment and I was successful on Monday so I celebrated on Tuesday. Things have been sort of wild around here so best not to make any sudden lifestyle changes, we need predictability in these unpredictable times. Pearl described this to me the other day in regard to her father who seems to have decided to return to the area, once again readjusting our little apple cart. In addition to that some animal was eating all our chickens. There are two things you should never try with me, one is upsetting my revenue stream, the other is upsetting my home food production. I like eggs and my flock has been reduced in one week from 9 hens to 3. Without going into the gory details I treed a raccoon on Tuesday and had him disposed of in short order along with the leftover debris of 9 cedar trees sent to the mill in the winter. If only I could clear up all my problems this way. The sun is shining but it is still uncomfortably cool for the date on the calendar and earlier this week when the whole sky was gray and low I couldn't help but think about Cormac McCarthy's The Road as I walked my own road imagining the nuclear winter and thinking grim thoughts about the future of the world. But today, the sun is shining and there are strawberries to pick and freeze to make smoothies in the winter for my precious child who is so articulate about everything. The slash fire is finished burning now and the yard looks better, the hens are safe, things are moving along as they tend to no matter what. My work docket is full and varied and I am humbled and grateful. I have eggs in the fridge.

Monday Duality

2011-06-27T07:47:00.000-07:00

There is a certain newness and potential of a Monday morning, that when I don't feel too wretched, is really rather exhilarating. Spending time with my dad often means having deep conversations about the heaviness of things. This is where I got my "this half empty glass is still quite full" attitude. During solemn childhood walks his pathos was transferred to me, not through his hands as he always walked ahead of us just a little. He needed that distance to sort himself out I suppose, but the grayness did waft backwards off him onto me. His is a world of duality and he told me a few days ago to not worry about the why and instead to just carry on in the right direction. We discuss politics, mostly American politics and we feel depressed and then we touch on all the great things Americans have done and we feel hopeful once again. And this is how the conversations ebb and flow, we discuss luck and perseverance, and the importance of learning throughout your lifetime and the joy of reading and listening to opera. I swear a lot and then feel bad later that he thinks I am coarse. I listen to him and realize he is more conservative than I thought he was based on our rather relaxed upbringing. He is slumped over more now and he walks slowly, a museum crawl and I find it makes me tired and I want to surge ahead but I don't, I stay in the space with him and take in what he has to offer me because I know the supply is limited. With all this weight I still feel okay despite my anxiety tugging at my stomach and today is Monday and I am starting again and I can hear my dad encouraging me to soldier on and I might just say the same thing back to him.

Going Away

2011-06-25T12:59:00.000-07:00

My dad and stepmother at the Reifel Wildlife Sanctuary, Westham Island BC

Have just spent a few days at my fathers house and not surprisingly woke up this morning with a raging headache, nausea and fear and anxiety rising like a raging river. It's been a few hours and I feel more normal but also tender. I had wanted to go and spend some time with the old folks to see how they're doing and now I know. I would say they are ready for some help. My dad is good for his age and my stepmother has Alzheimer's which we have known about for some time. She's mostly okay, generally cognizant but justifiably pissed off and prone to fussing. She was always this way but it's heightened now. We had some good chats over multiple glasses of wine and she seemed herself but there were moments when she would lash out and that was a bit hard to witness. My dad is not a touchy-feelie overly nurturing guy so it's hard for him to deal with her in this new and devolving state. He's used to her being capable and in charge and she is so much less that way now. I feel pretty drained after only 4 days, I can only imagine how they feel. I need to get in touch with all my siblings and report my findings, there are 8 of us between them. I am not looking forward to this but I feel like the time is right and there have not been any big crisis yet but there is certainly potential.

The good news I suppose is that when we arrived on Tuesday they were both tense and when we left they were cheerful which proves to me that they need more contact with all of us. It seems a simple solution considering the severity of what's happening.

Eddy

2011-06-20T17:26:00.000-07:00

Holy cow. I have to make this snappy. Had so many plans to make some drawings and paintings, in particular a painting of Eddy. He is not well, he is not himself or he is a new version of himself, we're not sure. Mark has been caring for him now for close to 8yrs and we think he had a stroke some weeks ago, but he seemed to rally and we thought it was a cold and he got better in a few days but now he is slow again and he just seems glum which makes us glum too. He's near the end of the line and I think he knows enough to know that he's really confused and weak and not a player any longer, not even close. It's distressing to all of us. Because he is weak his bathing schedule has been disrupted which in purely mechanical terms is tricky. Mark had to give him a sponge bath at the kitchen counter because he would not wake up long enough to get into the shower. It's tough on everyone but toughest on Eddy. We don't take him to the doctor for these things, our approach is practical, sympathetic but also realistic. What if he had cancer? We'd probably let it go. I suppose it's palliative care that we are providing. Mark is softening with him and we talk about just meeting him where he is, going easy on our expectations of his abilities and awareness. He was better yesterday and we were able to get him through the shower. And so it goes one day at a time.

Sleep Credits

2011-06-16T09:22:00.001-07:00

Perpetual Birthday Calendars printed by Moi, available on Etsy

There is nothing better than waking up to a notification that someone you don't know has sent you money for something you made. Last nights sleep earned me 35 big dollars, (minus $10 for shipping), leaving me with 25 big dollars to reinvest in boxed wine, I mean letterpress supplies and shoes for baby. Who said sleep was a waste of time, certainly not me. Be the first on your block to get one, these things are going like hotcakes, sort of.

Disruption

2011-06-13T14:37:00.000-07:00

Sample of grass collected during the walk.

I hate the dogs who come barking, biting and bitching as I walk. They hurl themselves down bucolic driveways, from rest on sundecks, snarling and lunging until they hit invisible walls of electricity or lengths of rope. I am peaceful as I go along because that is my mission, the goal of the whole activity to clear the poisonous slackitude from my mind and the road complies. It stretches itself out straight and open with only one big turn which I can easily navigate with my narrow body, narrow dog on narrow leash at my side. I look up and down as I go, noticing the grasses, Buttercup, Skunk Cabbage, the beginning of Indian Paintbrush and so many more silent road residents whose names I don't know. Do they know my name as I pass by occasionally stopping to yell "back-off" at the charging retrievers? What is the point of this walk, designed to calm me if my blood pressure shoots up while my body tenses forming and expelling the words that I launch not really toward the dogs at all but at the house they have emerged from. Hoping the words will drift along with the cottonwood fluff and be heard by the woman who lives there. What I wish she could experience are the jagged spikes as my heart pounds against my chest, feel them like sharp jabs in her temples. As I wait for the car—that I know is approaching—holding my breath as it rushes up to us and meets the dogs now in the middle of the road. Will today be the day they get hit? I am always surprised by how loud I can yell in these situations. It stops the dogs, perhaps saves their lives and I move on following the freshly mowed edge of the road with my eyes but still conscious of my disturbed heart.

Enjoy this.

2011-06-11T13:44:00.000-07:00

I'm busy right now with work and thinking about my story. I have been writing but I have also been walking a lot and just thinking and things are beginning to fall into place. I have also been doing some drawing but because I have so much work at the moment and quite a few bills to pay the work is taking the front seat while the rest is just chilling in the way back. So in the meantime, listen to this. It's from Radiolab a great show that I love, lots of talk about thought and experience, it makes me weak in the knees sometimes.

Me, Myself, and Muse - Radiolab

Respite

2011-06-03T09:58:00.000-07:00

One of the details from my daily walk.

Life inside my head can be exhausting. The constant vigilance, taking note of my mental state all the time, it's like adjusting and readjusting wool underwear, it just never feels right. So naturally I am pleased when I have the opportunity to just act, to think quickly and then burst into action.

It happened this week during my daily walk. I came across one of the neighbors horses, loose in his yard. The owner was at work and must have put the horse in his orchard for grazing and the horse got out and was lurching around the yard, testing the sensation of gravel under his hooves by the fire pit, tasting the BBQ and generally looking a bit freaked out by this sudden freedom. Without too much labored thought I attached my nervous dog to a fence post and intercepted the horse as he trotted toward the road, I raised my arms in the air to make myself appear authoritative, I grabbed him by the mane with my right hand and then held his nose in my left and sort of steered him toward the gate of the paddock. I spied some nasty bailing twine which I grabbed from the bucket of water (and horse shit) it was floating in and threw it around his neck and nose, making a quick halter so I could hold him and get the paddock fence open, splattering mud on my face in the process. I made the good-horse-go-forward clicking sounds and in he went, I closed up the gate being careful not to get shocked and went and rescued the dog who was really nervous because the horse was now very close to her, albeit on the other side of the fence. Then we carried on and I felt terribly brave and capable. It's been years since I've had much to do with a horse but it all comes back.

Farther down the road near the creek I stood for awhile looking skyward and watched a young eagle swoop and soar and then settle in the trees. Some smaller birds were heckling him, foolish and brave I thought and for a moment I imagined how exciting it would be to see the eagle swoop down and pick up the spaniel who had come out to follow us. I made it to Friday and they were playing some Bob Marley on the radio and it made me think of my youth and my husband and the weekend and I felt like I had hit on the just the right adjustment.

Self Portrait Saturday

2011-05-28T13:50:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait, May 28, 2011

Of all the paintings so far, this one best captures my terminal attitude of concern. I generally pass myself off as a mostly laid-back smart alec but this is what the mask conceals. Oh well. Hey, I'm getting my hair cut today, it's way overdue. It's been a year since my last one and my hair has turned into straw in the interim due to the crappy Trader Joe's shampoo I use. I worked on the story today, have been reading Lydia Davis as well which is helpful because her stories are all over the map structurally so I find that helpful. I have never been so good at doing things the conventional way and I find it strange that I need some permission to be non-traditional in my writing. Anyway, it's worth saying that I couldn't pay for the therapeutic effect these paintings afford me. I wonder if the next paintings post hair cut will be sassier? I'll just have to wait and see.

A response to yesterdays post

2011-05-26T10:41:00.000-07:00

Storytelling

2011-05-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

I am working on writing a story. I realize that I am not confident that I know exactly how to write a story but I am not letting that stop me. I have some key events to weave into something and I am not sure that I know where it is all going but I am moving forward with it anyway. My biggest fear is that the story won't go anywhere, that there will be no climax or resolution. Do these things even exist or is there just resignation, acceptance and adaption. I have no answers but maybe answers are not even a reasonable goal. I am writing this story and as things come to mind I put them in, like I am making a salad. I am a good salad maker so maybe I can focus on that, and making the story won't feel so uncharted. Now that I have mentioned it here I will have to finish it and present it somehow, that's okay, I am interested in finishing things these days.

Small Talk

2011-05-23T18:43:00.000-07:00

The artist in me wants to hang up the phone, close the door and be alone. I have lost my appetite for small talk. I can't track the simplest of conversations, I just don't care. I want my meals to arrive on wheels. I've had a really good day in my studio. I had a list of 4 things to accomplish and accomplish them I did and now they are done I want to sink into my head and make something for myself. Say something that is an expression of me. I heard a great poem today and I thought the poem is the thing for me but if it had been a story about straw bale houses I could have just as easily said, yes, the straw bale building is the thing for me. I am looking for attachment to something, something to be made by me, for me alone. But the slipping in is not to be because it is supper time and supper time means the mother, leader of the small pack must stop what she is doing and set an example for the others, for the husband and child and even the dog and cat have their own expectations of the human leader. So in I go, across the yard, east of my office to make the supper and wash the sheets and assume the roll that I have taken on and that I love in some ways and resent in others. There is nothing to be done, days come and go and I do my writing and one day when the time is right I will disappear into the page and they will feed themselves and the cat and dog will be long dead and I won't have replaced them and there will be stories and paintings and they will make my small talk for me.

On second thought

2011-05-18T09:24:00.000-07:00

I had a whole shoe rant going but with all this sun it's hard to be committed to whiny negativity. I'll get some shoes for spring, somehow. They'll be black not rust or pea green but I will survive. Instead I want to say something about Facebook. I turned off all notifications to my email and Blackberry because I was getting a little obsessed, so now when I check in after a few hours away from FaceCrack it's like opening a little present, seeing peoples likes and comments feels good. So there, back to work all of you.

Shameless Self Promotion

2011-05-14T10:25:00.001-07:00

Okay this could be confusing so stay focused, I have a second blog. It's not as quirky as this one as it's attached to my company website but hopefully it's still valid. It's a good place to see the work I do for money, MONEY!, not just this pleasant drivel I make for amusement and to keep myself from leaping into the river which I might have done this week. Holy crap was it ever wet, but thankfully we got some sun and all is forgiven, for now. For total ease of following my every move you can like me on Facebook and get a non stop barrage of ME at no extra charge.

Amy Butler Shirt

2011-05-09T18:00:00.001-07:00

I have been spending a lot of time in my bedroom lately. I am rich in places to be creative in my life. I am lucky to have an entire building dedicated to myself and I am also fortunate to have a large bedroom that I don't have to share with anyone. I have been sewing there and am trying to finish things in a short amount of time so that the season for which the garment I am making was intended does not pass without me being able to sport my hard work. I am interested in training myself to have better habits, to do things with more care and sewing falls into this category. I have always done it but I have not always done it well. I used to get so frustrated that I often ended up in tears. I also made a lot of clothes that were not exactly constructed well but they were good enough and I wore them. I am in a wholly different place in my development these days and I find I have amazing focus and am not afraid of ripping seams out to replace them with better ones. More precise ones. I am not trying to achieve any kind of perfection, rather I am attempting to really be in the process of making something and really do it until it meets with my satisfaction. I see precision as a viable goal. So the Amy Butler Liverpool Tunic is complete! I still need to put some buttons on it and then it will be ready to wear and I can start on the next thing. Each completed project signals permission to begin the next thing and so I go, making, making, until the end of time.

Almost Spring

2011-05-06T08:43:00.000-07:00

Poor little bloggie I have been walking past you like the mouse parts I step over to get to my room at the end of a each long day. Spring is in hard labor here and we keep starting and stopping, my mind is mushy and contracted and I worry that it's something dire but that's just me. It's friday finally and my sleep was cut open by a familiar voice from around the corner of my doorless bedroom, Mom? and there I was. Alive again and it's Friday so soon and Mark is coming over and the weekend calls for more rain. It's going to be Mother's Day which is okay but not a big deal for me, it's just another day in my life. I've been writing on paper, listening to words, writing down smells and the complicated feelings that arise from the emails I get and from the world that parades past me daily, there is no tidy way to put it all here and so I just fill up the notebooks that no one will ever see, and I hope that one day I can sit down for about 5 years and sort it all out into something useful or funny, the story of how I birthed myself at home alone. There is nothing new there, nothing I am experiencing that hasn't been felt by women before in the spring during a hard birth of this desirous season.

New Sketchbook Cover

2011-05-01T22:40:00.000-07:00

Self Portrait April 2011

I carry a notebook around with me all the time, it helps to keep me focused and to remember fleeting ideas. The books I have been using are the ones I was making to sell at the Bellingham Farmers Market several years ago. I had a few in reserve and every time I started a new one I would make a little collage on the inside front cover to sort of launch the whole thing. I am about to start a new one so I decided to make a painting on the cover. The photo is from the Clint Eastwood High Plains Drifter photo tribute I did one sunny afternoon in April. My dad gave me this very nice gray poncho shawl thing with fringe and it made me think of Clint, except with green grass and dandelions. What I am most excited about is seeing what happens to the painting as it gets worn out as the sketchbook gets used. Painting on the gray board was a challenge and I switched back to the old play set of watercolors. The weekend is over and I think we are back to rain on Monday. Osama Bin Laden has been killed and his body taken into American custody, a strange description. I am not jumping up and down. So much blood has been shed, so many dollars spent and we're still no closer to a peaceful society, maybe it just isn't in our nature.

Don't slash

2011-04-30T10:55:00.001-07:00

More reasons to just end it all now because you'll just never be this good. Variety Showcase.

I'm kidding of course (sort of). Alas in spite of all absence of prowess in any medium we continue to bang our bloodied heads against the walls of creative self expression. Looking for ways to let our tiny voices be heard, our malformed ideas sprouting like vines from under nuclear reactors. We make what we can, what else is there to do? It's spring and damn it's pretty out and it would be sad to have come this far only to miss summer so just pick up your knitting or whatever and put down that razor blade.

Better than yesterday

2011-04-26T17:57:00.000-07:00

Incredibly, sleep cures everything. With only one small near death freak out experience right as I dropped off, the night was pleasant and dream filled. I can't recall what the dreams were about now but that is typical. The cat kept purring and stepping on me, I do remember that. He's awfully heavy but makes up for it by being the best highest quality free cat ever. The weekend officially ended at 3pm today and I whacked a huge section of dry blackberries out of the area behind my house while taking a break from using my brain non-stop. When Pearl was safely home I took a short nap because I am inevitably sad once my husband clears out and I am left to face the week on my own. Who will make my supper, why is there no wine? These are my immediate concerns. Not bad.

Duality

2011-04-25T16:59:00.000-07:00

Best not to comment too specifically on what's really pissing me off the most today so instead I am thinking dreamy thoughts about "Fantastic Mr Fox" and how perfect art can be in contrast to this fucked up dreary existence we are all leading. Another pair of shoes? Why yes, I'll take two.

My Queen

2011-04-20T14:59:00.000-07:00

I grew up with the Queen looking down on me like god in places where it behooved me to speak quietly, particularly the Post Office in the small northern town where I lived. And because I was not trained formally to believe in god I did believe in the queen because she was so real and ever present. I felt my parents, who had emigrated from Great Britain, were somehow related to her. The young Queen who I encountered behind the Post Office wickets, wore a beautiful blue gown and sash sporting her very lovely yet understated crown, surrounded by a gilt frame covered in a patina of small town dust. She was the Queen of the school I attended, she was always there looking down on me with an expression that was part benevolence part duty. She represented many of the values I was raised with, staying calm, speaking well, tending the garden, wearing rubber boots in spring, thinking sensible thoughts and not showing off, all good stuff I think. As The Royal Wedding approaches and the excitement builds for William and Kate's big day I see the Queen as less of a god and more like a granny who must be terribly proud of her grandson. I bet she feels sad about the Lady Di business, she is after all only human and being British the stiff upper lip does quiver at times. I know mine will on the big day.

Unfinished

2011-04-15T10:10:00.001-07:00

Self Portrait in progress 04/14/11

Here's the latest self portrait I am working on. I have switched to larger paper and am taking a slower approach. In the beginning I would paint the thing in one sitting. This piece I drew last week with 2H lead which is harder and leaves less information on the paper. I finally sat down and started to paint this morning after I dropped Pearl at school. Hopefully I will be able to add more color to this one, baby steps. When I went to bed last night the moon was out, casting shadows in the yard and I slept well and had some good dreams which is always a pleasure. Today is sunny and cool a stark change from the snow we woke up to yesterday. I took the dog for a walk on the road and am now settling in to my office to do my client work. And so it goes another day.

The Process

2011-04-14T08:51:00.000-07:00

As much as I drag my feet when it's time to put a proposal together for a job I found today that I actually felt good about doing it. This is an improvement. I like making money and I feel pretty sure that what I do has real value. Where it gets sticky for me is laying out the entire process and assigning a dollar amount to each task, every job is different, each client is unique. So I decided to approach it in a different way. I started a few days ago, making a sketch of the process, a time line of sorts. I broke the whole process into 4 phases and then broke down the tasks in each phase and assigned time to each one. Now if I get the job I won't have to do much thinking about the process because I will have it all mapped out and if you're like me structure is super important. It's funny these little moments of clarity I have. I have been doing this work a long time but I still try to make the process better each time. I don't want to go through life dragging my feet, dreading the minutiae. I was inspired this week by this artist. We are not robots and there is a creative aspect to everything I do. After I sent my proposal off I went for a long drizzly walk, it snowed this morning, and tonight after I fulfill my duties as a mom I will reward myself with some more portrait painting.

Trade

2011-04-11T11:42:00.000-07:00

I have a list as long as my arm of things I want to do. Some of them I have to do, like finish my taxes and make more money but still I manage to come up with other things to add to this list ensuring it will never be complete. I wonder if when I am 97 I will start backing off on the list thing. I have had on my list or rather on my radar a table on wheels for my office. Apparently I have been thinking about it for quite some time because in speaking to my friend Greg today he said oh yes the old table on wheels idea. Hmmm. Greg's a woodworker and so I asked if I could take a woodshop class over at his house to build the damn thing and he agreed. In return I promised to browbeat him into building a website for himself which he can totally do and I will just keep him focused on the task and make it pretty for him. Attached is the sketch of said table and Greg said I should make a 3-D model of it using Sketch-Up. Because we are getting older and our brains are shrinking I have recently dedicated myself to learning to use new programs and to use the programs I already know how to use better. Look at that, an entire post and I didn't even mention death once. Must be spring.

Jealousy

2011-04-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

Lately I seem to be questioning everything, actually I guess I have always questioned everything except maybe relationship choices, that's another story. I question the whole blogging thing, why do we do it? What the hell is the point? And Facebook? Why? (Another day there too.) Who really gives a shit? I came across this blog during my constant quest for attention, recognition and understanding about why people read other peoples blogs. Is it to get info about great products to help streamline your important experience as a stay-at-home frustrated mom or to get more recipes that you will never cook because all you eat is salad and cereal? I am looking for inspiration, I am looking for a reason to stay here, to stay in the game. I met a friend in the bank the other day, he has lung cancer. We talked a little bit about that and he asked me if I had ever had a psychotic break and I laughed and said well no in fact, but I do spend every minute of every day trying to avoid having one. I have merely dipped my toes into panic attacks and deep depression but I am trying to steer clear of a full psychotic break at all costs. So I blog, and I look for other blogs out there to help me along. So sorry if I don't get why some house wife in Alabama with a visually confusing blog about her 11 kids has 6 billion followers and I have 20 and about 6 who read every time I post. It doesn't matter, the activity of posting creates my safe haven and the little comments only serve to encourage me, and while I feel jealous of those goddamn popular mommy bloggers, this is who I am really paying attention to. Props to Cupcake for making her visible to me.

Ranting Rant Rant

2011-04-06T21:38:00.000-07:00

I think Rupert Murdoch has the ability to change the course of American politics and perhaps the world at large. There, I said it. Glenn Beck has been sent packing and driving north today I thought about the power this media outlet wields and how they waste it. Like leaving the gas pumping onto the pavement at the gas bar. Inconsiderate sons of bitches laying to waste so much potential. If there is a god I hope he smites them, really smites them hard with dirty pointed sticks, with thorns and conjunctivitis. Sadly though, Glenn will go and be successful elsewhere, maybe on some Tea Party network and Fox will get their advertisers back and everyone will go back to buying toilet paper at Walmart to wipe their gigantic asses and I'll opt to disappear into the Canadian wilderness with my books and my knitting and my tiny morsel of hope that I keep in a canning jar. Sweet dreams America, how'd you get so fat anyway?

Looking busy

2011-04-04T20:39:00.000-07:00

Recently completed coat.

Try to keep busy. Apparently after all these years of existence this is all we can collectively come up with to keep our minds off what troubles us. Be it religious genocide, eternal strife, impending death or absent children. Keep busy the chorus sings. I sew to fill the time between doing client work and lying motionless on the couch, my mind running wild with scenarios of danger cooked up from the local news and periodic viewings of crime shows. Pearl is going off for a few days with her dad and I will practice the time honored tradition of keeping busy. I still remember the weight of responsibility the first night I spent with her and I took it on, my instinct to nurture and protect overtook me. So now you might think a few days off would be something I look forward to but instead it is just the opposite. I feel like the herding dog, left purposeless, panting and nervous at the gate waiting for its flock to return. My little flock of one who lays sleeping 15 feet away from me.

New SIte!

2011-03-31T09:07:00.000-07:00

…and it's live. The website I have been working on for the past year or so is finally here. The plight of the Shoemaker's barefooted children is true. I spend way more time on client work than I do on my own promotional efforts but like most things I set my hand to, they do get done, eventually. It is with great pride that I launch my fourth website associated with my own company. One tip, it works more like a book than a website. Enjoy!

Sleep Disorder

2011-03-30T13:08:00.000-07:00

So it turns out that my habit of falling asleep at the the drop of hat and then waking up screaming, sometimes kicking and in a panic that death has a stranglehold on me is an actual thing. It's a sleep disorder with a long name that I've already forgotten. I slept better last night with this info so there will be no pill taking for me. With my personal history I do not need another thing to potentially make a habit of. So there, sleep well if you can. It's hit or miss for me, sometimes the night is friendly sometimes it's an asshole.

Off-Track

2011-03-28T14:45:00.000-07:00

I'm easily stymied. If in between things, at the end of one thing and not quite ready to begin another thing, I drift. Until I am ready to engage my brain in focused thoughtful work I loiter in the kitchen and eat or mindlessly clean dog nose prints off the doors, or just sit and stare. I am easily distracted and what felt up a week ago now feels down. I don't want to cook, I don't want to start my taxes. I need to think of numbers and scenarios for a client that I may or may not want. The things I want to be doing are jammed up behind the things I should be doing which are in turn pushed up against the things I am not doing and so I can feel my mood spiraling into chaos. To make matters worse I ate a crappy fast food hamburger today, the worst in terms of self destructive behavior in my books. The sensible thing of course is to stop whining and take a walk or a ride or do the pilates DVD I bought but have yet to do. I feel better just writing this itchiness down somewhere, thanks for listening big empty blog void.

One positive note, I saw "Secretariat" and really liked it. Who doesn't love a good horse story.

Self Portrait Tuesday

2011-03-22T08:48:00.000-07:00

Here's my painting for today. It's a bit wonky as I painted it from a photo taken with my phone. Generally I print these photos out but last night I just used my phone. It was challenging, the photo had almost no color and I am still struggling with the paint in tubes. I also need some new brushes. I still have those feelings as I drop off to sleep that I have forgotten to reset some kind of alarm that will prevent me from dying, and I wake feeling disoriented my lap covered in books, pen in hand. I am trying to break my bedtime TV habit choosing instead to make notes about the following day, further efforts to keep myself on task. It seems to be helping my generalized anxiety. This is a busy week culminating in a busy weekend, so off I go.

I am reminded of my mother who never slept in but at the end of her life in her methadone haze she would sleep late. I would look in on her and on one particularly sunny February morning she admitted to secretly enjoying the laziness of sleeping in. Today I admit to really enjoying being stripped bare by these paintings, making them and posting them and not worrying about what anyone thinks about them, it's delicious.

Untitled #1

2011-03-20T21:46:00.000-07:00

March 20th, West Spanish Banks, Vancouver BC

Nothing to say except that if you sit really still for a really long time everything is revealed to you and in the meantime if you have to get up and move around it is good to do a little sewing, carry a bit of firewood around and sometimes getup early and notice that the birds are singing and that you got through the winter, another winter without driving into a median somewhere.

I saw my dad today, his sweater had a small stain on it and it reminded me that they aren't as buttoned up as they once were and everything feels frail. We took a walk to the beach and I didn't talk to him about any of the issues, the big issues that are hanging over all of us. I just wanted to amble along next to him with the west wind blowing in our faces, hoping that it had already dropped its radioactive particles somewhere farther out at sea. And I feel more and more centered and unwilling to deal with bullshit because everything is fleeting and so I work on my knitting and chop the wood and hug my kid and at night I lay next to another human being whose dreams intersect with mine but aren't dependent on them. Tomorrow is Monday and I will rise and do and go and act and things will get moved along and it will seem purposeful and it will be, because I say so, because actions speak louder than words and that is what I am paying attention to.

An egg in the hand

2011-03-10T18:06:00.000-08:00

Friday today and here's the chicken report. Since building the coop-cage before Christmas I have not lost anymore hens since Gloria the Brahma was so violently eviscerated. I still see traces of his wing feathers near the coop but can't bring myself to pick them up. The hens seem fine without him in fact they are better than fine, they seem a bit kinder to each other, a more cohesive group, no one vying for attention from the fabulous rooster. They are more of a team, even the two little bantam hens are doing well. I set the light timer to come on around 4am about 2 months ago and at 5pm when I lock the hens in I give them some corn to eat before bedtime, to keep them warm during the night which aids in egg production. Since then I have been getting about 4 eggs per day which was my goal. We eat eggs everyday and there are plenty for baking and I can also share some with my tenant when I am away and she tends to the hens.

Today also marks a bit of a milestone as it is the beginning of the last weekend that Mark and I will spend as swinging singles. After this weekend Pearl will be with us more of the time as her dad is leaving the state for work. With all change there is a period of adjustment but I see this as a positive thing as time is such a gift with a growing child. We'll have twice as much weekend play time to see friends and family, go to the movies, hike, shop and chill out.

I had hoped to give up something for lent and I was having trouble defining it but I think I can sum it by saying for lent (and perhaps forever) I want to set free my complicated feelings about the past and go forward without contempt or judgment for the lives of others. It's really quite freeing, happy Spring.

Covering my mouth

2011-03-07T10:30:00.000-08:00

There's a message here but you'll have to figure it out for yourselves. The new proper water colors I bought are challenging and I seem to lean toward brown and black, too much color is difficult so I am sticking to just tones and shades. The paint is vibrant and a little goes a long way. My week is busy, meetings, work, commitments. Things are changing again in our domestic realm which seems appropriate as it is spring. I missed my mothers death anniversary this year but I did have a great dream about her now that I think about it and it was nice to see her. I worked outside all day yesterday so the yard looks a little better which makes it easier for me to work indoors all day, and as usual those closest to me continue to nourish and ground me.

It arrived!

2011-03-05T18:44:00.001-08:00

Mail experiment #2 was a success. Mr Bothman shown here, received his postcard today. It all happened whilst I drank beer with the Americano pal Nick and his new paramour Suzee who I approve of highly (not that Nick needs my approval). All in all it was a Saturday to remember. Doesn't Mr Bothman look surprised and charmed?

Because Kids Need Books

2011-02-26T17:23:00.000-08:00

It is well documented that children need to read. They need to be encouraged and coddled and reminded to read once they know how. When my daughter was little I worried about how I was going to teach her to read. It's a challenging prospect, 26 letters with varying sounds are put into groups that make their own sounds and have myriad meanings. It's complex but somehow it happens. I read a lot of cookbooks when Pearl was a baby, it was all I could handle in my sleep deprived state. She watched me and would pick up my books and run her fingers along the lines of type mimicking reading. It was a miracle. I read to her everyday, everyday. If I didn't read to her I felt like I had neglected her in a very profound way. Eventually she went to school and she read with ease and I felt like a champion. Kids books are great but they are often pretty safe, all inclusive and soft, everything is rainbows and sunshine. This is where Edward Gorey comes in to play. I was introduced to the works of Edward Gorey-perhaps incorrectly-as a child. They were picture books ostensibly, accompanied by short descriptions of said pictures. I didn't get that they were dark as I was a pensive child but I got that they were funny and rhymed and the people were odd looking and they spoke to me. Kids need books but they need variety too and so I recommend the above book. It's ominous but so is life and kids need real information, it also contains useful life lessons for those lucky enough to postpone inevitable death.

Weather report

2011-02-24T11:58:00.000-08:00

While wearing colorful tights and my knee high boots cheer me up, long johns have another effect all together. It's cold today, the wind is howling and sucking the heat out of the house and my office and me. I have 4 layers on and still I feel chilled to the bone. The dog has the right idea, she is laying in a patch of sun on my office floor. If only. I am stuck in my chair, albeit comfy chair freezing my ass off. As much as I hate to complain, I hate these weather conditions.

Mail Experiment No. 2

2011-02-22T22:50:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Bothman,
As it seems that my earlier postcard to you has not arrived I decided today to make you another one. I went to your Facebook page and stole a picture of you. Please don't be creeped out by this, it's not as if I snuck into your house and cut a lock of your hair. As far as I know you wear your hair quite short making this type of thing difficult. Lucky for me, you seem to favor pictures of yourself that feature your outfit more than your face. I am just learning to paint so this makes it easier on me. A plaid tie is so much easier to create than a nose. I have decided I will include your zip code and 4 digit helper number on this postcard in hopes that the hapless postal carrier can more easily direct the card to you. I honestly think my hand painted Frankfurter is magnet-ed to some civil servants fridge as I type this instead of yours, it makes me mad and sad too. With all this geo-locating and the like I had hoped the poorly addressed card would present a personal challenge to the faceless carrier who's route it ended up on. Apparently not. So here goes, I will post this portrait of you tomorrow and hopefully soon enough it will arrive at your domicile and you and your small dog can enjoy it together.

Yours sincerely,
RMS

Wood work

2011-02-21T11:16:00.000-08:00

I burned one tank of gas on the first day, after the boys helped me get the saw started. It sputtered and smoked and we decided, the three of us, that the cause was old gas. I haven't used the saw for a year since I knocked the chain off new years day 2010. I never even tried to put it back on even though it's a simple task. I just threw up my trembling arms. I can't remember the last time I filled the gas can. So on Saturday I ran through one tank of gas which took about twenty minutes and that made enough wood to fill 3 wheelbarrows of split pieces which I stacked perpendicular to the other piles in the carport siting increased pile stability. I stacked carefully and thoughtfully thinking about how it will feel next fall to use this perfectly seasoned dry firewood. On Sunday I went through two tanks of gas and my arms felt less shakey but I did notice that I really screw my face up while I use the saw, concentrating takes brow furrowing and a little shoulder tension. I should wear chaps but I don't own any. I wear ear protection and glasses. I try to be careful, knowing the saw could rip through my jeans and into my flesh. I cut a lot of small limbs from the giant maples upper branches that are now accessible on the ground and started a new pile of boughs so I could move around more easily as I bucked up the logs. Stepping carefully, avoiding tripping on branches. The tops of the cedars are worst, they have tons of springy branches and they are tougher to spit, the maul bounces off them sometimes, wasting my efforts. My biceps and upper back are stiff but amazingly after splitting, loading and stacking about 5 wheelbarrow loads I feel a bit stronger today and so this is my plan. Today I will try to saw through 3 tanks of gas and load maybe 8 wheelbarrow loads. The work felt endless but I think as my strength increases it will feel less overwhelming. In between I made a few paintings.

Satisfied Soul

2011-02-17T12:59:00.000-08:00

Self Portrait, Feb 16, 2011

Mark took the photo I used to make this painting. I was looking at my computer screen, sitting at the dining room table, slumped and concentrating, the full weight of my head in my hand. It's been a few weeks since I last made a painting and I was feeling anxious to get back to it. I can feel the wheels of my productivity begin to seize up as if my deeper self is saying "let's make something just for you and then we'll get back to work". I am not sure who's voice this is, my soul perhaps. My soul will go along with all the things I do but then it wants me to deviate a little, to make something small, something inconsequential, throw myself into something and the soul is fed and pleased and I get to experience the feeling of being swallowed whole by the process of creation free of attachment or responsibility to a paying client. It seems the more I make time for these little sideshow dalliances the better I feel about my work in general. Go figure. I met with a new client today who I like. I dressed in proper clothes and have not taken my coat off since I got home, I unbutton it and button it back up. Like the painting, the coat satisfies my restless soul.

Peerless Comfort

2011-02-15T09:30:00.000-08:00

Back in my office after being away for a few days and looking ahead to several days of long hours at my desk, I find I could not be happier. I have few high-end consumer products but there is one that I would not trade for anything and that is my Herman Miller Aeron Chair. I am struck, while easing into it this morning-after working from my couch last night and Mark's dining room chairs over the weekend-you really can't beat the comfort of this chair. As usual I am still fighting the residual weekend funk, battling myself but sitting in this chair and feeling it's tremendous support I am encouraged to sit up and snap out of it. Maybe you can buy happiness after all.

Mail Experiment No. 1 Update

2011-02-11T16:18:00.000-08:00

Nothing to report so far. >: (

Had a headache this morning that made me cry which was a bad idea because the pain was in my frontal lobe so when my sinuses became swollen from the crying my head hurt even more. I laid down to avoid throwing up and slept for awhile while the pain sorted itself out. Eventually it started to rain and I took a shower. When I got to Mark's he made some soup and I got some work done which I am happy with so it wasn't a terrible day but still, it would be nice if that frankfurter postcard would arrive because then that would be one less thing to worry about. The soup Mark made was was alphabet which amused me.

Together again

2011-02-10T21:23:00.000-08:00

Here's a funny thing. It's Thursday which means it's only been 48hours since I last saw my husband, and in less than 24 more I will see him again and tonight I find I am overwhelmed with that good feeling of seeing him, of being with him. It's no big romantic freakshow when we're together it's more like you found your favorite sock (a really good high quality sock) and after reuniting the pair on your feet you go for a very long walk and maybe the day is fine and you see something new in a place you've looked a million times before. That's how I feel tonight, anticipating those together feelings that make everything seem new again and filled with possibility, like fresh pages in a new book or laying down on clean sheets you've slept in for 8 years.

Mail Experiment No. 1

2011-02-03T16:01:00.000-08:00

Dear Mr. Bothman,
I have accepted your challenge. Yesterday at 10pm I put a postcard addressed to you into a group mailbox in the Barkley District. As requested the address only includes a description of your home and it's relative location to a creek. I have documented the postcard here in the event that it doesn't make it to you but I hope that it will. I used a sixty cent stamp instead of the usual first class postage. I hoped this would send a clear message to the postal carrier that I recognized there would be extra effort needed to get this particular piece of mail to it's destination. I did not include a personal message on the card, instead I chose to make a painting, the subject of which I thought would please you. It pleased me in it's simplicity and multiple meaning. Who doesn't love a frankfurter, or painting of the same.

Please watch your mail and let me know what happens.

Yours Sincerely, RMS

What to Wear

2011-01-29T09:19:00.000-08:00

I had a whole rant planned on the failings of clothes for tween girls using these shorts as evidence for my point. But the whole thing just left me empty so this is my message. You can wear these shorts with a tiny tank top all you want as long as you don't leave the yard. Off the property demands that you wear longer shorts and a proper t-shirt. The message here is that while you have a beautiful body you don't need to share it with everyone. Clothes provide helpful boundaries for decorum. Years ago a friends 15 yr old daughter was riding the train to Eugene from Bellingham. She was scantily clad in short shorts, halter top and flip flops. Her mother asked "are you planning on having sex on the train"? Of course the answer was no and so the daughter was sent back to her room to rethink her travel clothes. Sexuality is so out there these days being sold in the form of bikinis and tramp stamps for 5 yr olds. It's confusing for everyone, age appropriate dress is under fire as we are force fed the overt sexuality of youth culture. I am still amazed by grown women in business settings who sport plunging necklines. Breasts are beautiful things but do you really want everyone checking them out while you're delivering a presentation on water safety? You have to ask yourself this.

There, I have officially branded myself as old and conservative, oh well.

Warmth

2011-01-27T13:53:00.000-08:00

Have made a dent in the paper associated with filing my state taxes and am prepared to do the big federal push. It wasn't so bad this year. My accountant is a champ and I enjoy going into his office and reporting on my financial progress over the past year. He's handsome too, so that helps. So superficial I know. The weather is warm, 50°F today and I keep finding myself out in the yard poking around, cutting blackberries, raking dead grass. It's amazing to think we are only a month past the solstice and already I am thinking about how I could improve the garden. In buying chicken feed the other day I chatted with the guy who owns the feed place and he suggested I offer the hens even more light than I have been giving them. I have the light on at night now too except it's confusing them and last night they were out until past dusk because the light was on inside the coop. Tonight I will set the timer so that it only comes on after dark, once the hens are indoors. I mentioned this concern to the feed store man, he cocked his head to one side, he saw the predicament but had no answer. He's been a farmer his whole life and probably has a better routine with his chickens, something he can do in his sleep without any thought. I am not willing to say yet that spring is coming, rather it is winter that is moving along. The perpetual changing of the seasons takes time, all year in fact. You can lose yourself in the progress of it.

"R" in the background

2011-01-20T15:56:00.000-08:00

I spontaneously brushed the dog in a show of love today. I was bored I'll admit and it seemed like a nice thing to do. She enjoyed it but she did look a little nervous, she knows this is not my normal M.O.. Today was long and I kept wanting to call my tenant and invite her over for tea or something just so I could talk to someone. I pressed on and made this painting instead and completely missed the time when I usually go up the driveway to meet Pearl. She suddenly appeared at the door and I was surprised by the time having become completely absorbed in activity. I need to make a massive to do list because I have quite a lot to get done but it's all floating around loose in my head making me feel unfocused. I needed to make the painting though and now I feel a little calmer and more willing to focus on what's at hand, whatever that is. I wish I had one of those crazy glass walls they have in CSI where there are all these different levels of information floating in space and the actors can point at things and they expand and contract and link up with connecting information. That's what's in my brain right now only it's like I am viewing it from the wrong side so it's all backwards. Better make that list before I just crumple onto the couch under a book.

Completion

2011-01-17T19:32:00.000-08:00

Dragged myself out today to buy a set of double pointed needles. I have other things to do but this hat that I have been obsessively knitting for the past couple of weeks had to be finished. I wandered out around 2pm, right as all the over scented high school students were beginning their end of the day migration and made my way with them up to the drugstore to mail a condolence card. A store bought card which had traces of guilt on it. I can't make everything. The words printed inside seemed good enough but still it felt cheesy. I could have just written a note, but what to say. Your life will never be the same, you have lost your only father. Your heart is broken. You won't get over it, why would you want to? Instead I sent a card with a lovely painting of a single purple tulip on it. The members of this club of grief stricken people will understand. Grief is overwhelming and familiar, we all understand so we nod at each other with these crisply designed cards whose words are appropriate and safe presented in tasteful fonts.

I walked from the drugstore to the knitting store quickly as it had started to rain while I was mulling over over-priced eye brow brushes, luckily I was dressed for the rain. Still I felt cold but also sort of hot from the briskness of my movement past the nondescript buildings that make up our suburban landscape. I wished I was wearing a sweater.

In the knitting store I unwrapped myself from my shoulder bag and loosened my scarf, removed my gloves and began my usual contortions about what I needed, what I was making, how it was making me feel, why I was doing it. My usual public dance, speaking quickly my hands flying around. The owner wasn't in but her helper was able to sort me out. There was a young woman there winding yarn into balls on their machine. She was exactly the type of person I have been hoping to run into in this shop. I considered coming back later with my pattern and project but really I just wanted to work it out in silence on my own and not feel like I was performing for anyone as I tend to.

On my way past the vegetable store next door I noticed a man loading his car, resting a gallon of white milk on the roof before placing his bags in the back seat. His skin, white as his milk, had a dense but short black beard at a right angle to his neck, a thin bright column standing up out of his black colored coat. His black jaw length hair falling in his face. I wished he had on a fine orange knit hat such as the one I was rushing home to complete and perhaps a scarf of bright colored wool to warm up his overall chiaroscuro demeanor. As I passed him another young man decked out in excellent punk rock style passed in between us and I had to catch his eye and smile because I approved of how he looked and off I went feeling pleased to be out on a gray Monday afternoon.

Particularly Delicious

2011-01-14T08:01:00.000-08:00

This is what I am reading currently. My friend and renowned feminist poet Maria McLeod lent it to me for my birthday. It's incredible. I have read other books of Aimee's and this one is all that and more. So keep it down out there.

Motivation

2011-01-13T10:31:00.000-08:00

I think I might need someone to come over and yell at me a bit to get working. I am in some kind of strange placid mode where I am dreamily going from one pleasant task to another. Knitting, cooking, tidying, fire stoking, long pensive walks. It's all quite surreal but I really need to get back on the billable hours horse.

Snow Day

2011-01-12T18:57:00.000-08:00

It's my moms birthday today, she'd be 80 if she were alive. It was a snow day and Pearl stayed home from school and we took a walk up Bill Sorensons hill and looked out at the Nooksack Valley all covered in snow. I miss my mother deeply but what can you do, you soldier on. The day was lazy. We went to town and got dog food and ice cream and ran into a few people we know at the grocery store. It felt good to be a part of this little town. There were several kids from Pearls class in the grocery store and she met them with hugs and genuine hellos. We rented a movie and came back home and sat on the couch under a brand new quilt sent to us by Pearls great grandmother, Noni, from her birth family, a lovely woman who was there when Pearl became our child. She was so gracious in a really difficult moment, this quilt is a beautiful metaphor for all the unique members of the family and how we all fit together. My mom died the year before Pearl was born, that loss was partly what motivated me to initiate the adoption. I was suddenly aware how short time was. I needed to move forward. I was lucky, I had a really good mother and even though she's gone I am fortunate to have many amazing women in my life who instruct and inspire me. So Happy Birthday Mom, I miss you and I'm okay. xox

Another one.

2011-01-09T11:29:00.001-08:00

Self Portrait, January 9/2011

It snowed today and yesterday someone shot a democratic congresswoman in Arizona. I don't think the world is ending but I do think American society is rapidly deteriorating. I think I am going to switch to gouache this week. Fasten your seat belts.

More nakedness

2011-01-08T13:36:00.000-08:00

Self Portrait, January 8/2011

Despite my lovable husband laughing at them I am persevering . This one is a bit masculine but then it could easily argued that I am a tad masculine also. Oh well I take solace in the knowledge that I do sit down to pee.

Everything means nothing

2011-01-07T19:08:00.000-08:00

Another good day today. It's so strange to feel good for so many days and weeks in a row. Of course there is always something to worry about just when you feel like things are making sense someone brings up the 2012 end of the world according to the Aztec calendar thing. And then you really start to think is this why people are assessing things and making meaningful resolutions because the end of days is just up around the bend. I don't know. John Boehner is speaker of the house in league with my pal El Diablo, the republicans have that nasty majority and seem poised to ruin everything that is good and fair including funding for NPR and food inspections. Oh spam, can I trust thou? But then that homeless guy Ted Williams with the incredible voice is discovered and some nice folks from right here in Mossville win Megamillions, and the sun came out unexpectedly today. On the way here tonight I couldn't stop looking at the clouds as I drove along, they were so beautiful. At a red light I noticed an opening to the west and the clouds were all yellow and glowing delightfully and then I noticed this Maxfield Parrish knock off was above a Shell gas station and further along the road I saw the same thing again above another Shell station and everything made sense in a demented way. We are but specks and what the hell did the Aztecs even know about time and dates and numbers, we're a blip here, sucking oil from the ground breeding incredible animals with deep voices who can tell our stories on radio and TV so that we can sit in meeting rooms and have things to discuss while the weather just does its thing around us and means nothing.

And another thing...

2011-01-06T12:12:00.000-08:00

I deleted 1300 emails from my inbox yesterday and today I am unsubscribing from all the weird random email newsletters I get. So there.

Thursday

2011-01-06T10:10:00.000-08:00

So god-damned black out this morning and wet, like the inside of a dead cow complete with matted fur laying upside down in a deep ditch, half submerged. I turned my light on at 6am in an effort to pull myself up out of the dream I was having which I have no memory of now. I wrote about the darkness, what else is there to write about? Thankfully Pearl was cheerful at 6:30 when her alarm drew her out of her little cave across the semi hall. She poked her head around the corner of my closet and mumbled hello. I said, I am having trouble getting up when she returned with a tada around the corner 10 minutes later, naked with her head wrapped in a towel. I was grateful I would only have to motivate myself into action. I made the bed, an act which seems to help sort me out in the morning and she instructed me to start the eggs. Roger. I got dressed in basically the same clothes I have been wearing since Monday night when I last showered. They get so nice and soft I reasoned and I lack the mental capacity to choose a whole new outfit most mornings. By the time we left for school the sky was barely beginning to lighten and I commented on how it felt like the middle of the night. We are sleepwalkers, dreamily feeling our way around in the dark. I know the light will return and so its all okay.

Self Made

2011-01-05T09:21:00.000-08:00

Self Portrait January 2011

I watched "The Royal Tenenbaums" the other night and was inspired by the poor quality paintings by one of the characters. Richie Tenenbaum. They were all of his sister Margot and it was clearly stated that while the family had a lot of hope for his ability he had really not measured up as a painter. I have allowed myself to be stymied by my lack of expertise in many areas and I have spent more time than I would like to admit dreamily sitting on my couch thinking of making things only to fall asleep and accomplish nothing. I admire small paintings and so I made one of myself yesterday while I waited for the pot-roast leftovers to reheat. One of the things the Artists Way drums into your head is the idea that the process is what is important and that while a pleasing final product is just that it should not be the only goal. Making a small painting and putting it on your blog is sort of like taking your clothes off in a room with 6 people in it. The gossip might spread, she took her clothes off right there in front of us! Hopefully one of those people will think, I want to expose myself too and she did it and was not struck dead. Nothing is perfect but making things makes me feel happy and alive, so expect more of these misshapen, poorly shaded studies.

It's a great movie by the way if you haven't seen it. Any film that shows cross sections of brownstones with people busy in each window and miniature stage sets gets all my thumbs up.

Resolution

2010-12-31T10:14:00.000-08:00

So here it is, the last day of this big year and I am poised for the new fresh year to begin tomorrow. This year was pretty good so I think I'll keep at what I have been doing. Can't find my last list of resolutions if I even had one, usually it's a list of loose intentions, exercise more, drink less, be happier, be a better mother. I can do these things. In 2011 I want to write a bit more, sew some more, keep reading, keep learning, maybe raise some pigs, get the chicken flock to be more productive, get rid of some stuff, cook better stuff, make better work, collaborate more widely with people, finish some projects started long ago, hike more often. Eat more vegetables and less meat, write more letters, learn to use the camera better, work in the garden, grow a little food, learn to play a song on the piano and sing along to it. Keep giving blood. Keep the kitchen sink cleaner, read the magazines that I subscribe to, watch less TV. Love my loved ones a little bit more everyday and embrace the great unknown. Look up everyday and say thanks for this life.

In Between

2010-12-29T22:54:00.000-08:00

Pearl went back to her dad's today for the duration of the Christmas break. I went to see a friend and drop off a little gift and then did some shopping to replenish my vegetable supply. I feel like all I have been consuming the last 10 days is alcohol, sugar, flour and animal fat. I am waiting for my gout to reappear and for my ass to sprout another ass. Oh well. In the parking lot at the local specialty food store a Volvo load of good looking enthusiastic people waved at me like crazy and for a minute I thought, do these people really know me because I have no idea who they are. I immediately thought this is early Alzheimer's, loss of recognition of people you have spent long hours in meaningful conversation with. In the store they apologized for mistaking me for someone else and I felt so relieved to not know them after all but also I felt good because they were attractive and obviously hip and they had mistaken me for one of their tribe. I stood a little taller then as I stuffed my overpriced purchases into my shopping bag hoping I wouldn't later be accused of shoplifting. It was a gorgeous day and I felt good even though the doomsayers predicted snow, I saw no evidence of it. I can't quite get down to work even though there is some to be done. I still just want to knit and sew and read and eat candy and float around between the house, my office, the chicken coop and woodpile. It's late now, the dark hours and I am up working because what else is there to do but sit and type and listen to music and think about this life I have created. All possibility and perfection like a freshly made bed that you could dive into or lay out all your things on, a vast plane of discovery. A place to line up the words that are the signs of where I want to go in the next year, words, garments, books, a space for lovemaking, journals of blank pages to contain all that I am thinking this moment and the next and the next.

Happy New Year dearest readers.

Early riser

2010-12-23T05:37:00.000-08:00

Slipping out to my office under cover of darkness while the house is asleep. I have one little letterpress job I need to print this morning for Christmas. I can hear the rain on the skylight in the vestibule which means when it gets light finally I will be installing the coop door in the rain. Oh well that's what rain gear is for. I hope the chickens enjoy their new security. I want a coffee but the sound the steamer makes would ruin this beautiful heavy silence.

Coop News

2010-12-22T07:24:00.000-08:00

I strive to be ruthlessly efficient in all things and so recently I decided I needed to figure out who's laying and who's not laying down in coop-world. Obviously the two roosters getting eaten was a loss because I could have eaten them myself and that Brahma was huge. Put that in the regret column. The Bantam Rooster was just little and I feel sad about him but I never really saw where he went, just like the Peacock he just didn't show up for work and was never seen again. Now I have about 8/9 full size hens and 2 bantams. I get about 2 eggs most days, Chicken Betty White is the most prolific layer despite her scrawny size and erratic behavior, and she lays a white egg. I discovered yesterday during my work in the coop that one of the Barred Rocks is producing the only brown egg I have been getting. So that saves those two hens from eventual slaughter. My plan is to create a lean mean first-rate laying machine down there, if you don't lay you're soup and that's it. Grain is for layers, full stop.

Back to earth

2010-12-21T08:39:00.000-08:00

So beyond all of my deep talk of transformation etc... I have work to do. My chicken flock is getting knocked off one by one so I am doing something about it. Off I go out to the coop to build a little aviary attachment so that the chickens can be left in while I am away here and there over the winter without fear of being devoured by raccoons and hawks.

I saw Food Inc, finally, grudgingly and so I am once again thinking about raising a few pigs and some chickens for my meat eating needs. So there, concrete news from the country that you don't have to roll your eyes about. Enlightenment is great and all but bring on the bacon.

Happy Solstice you pagan vixens.

Self Portrait

2010-12-20T08:50:00.000-08:00

As time is not to be wasted and some sort of enlightenment seems to be the goal, I am interviewing a new state of being called clarity. I wear it like skin made from 1 part sobriety and 2 parts consciousness. I wore it out the other night on the outside of my clothes after trying it out underneath everything at home. I was not disappointed. My surprisingly brave self rose to the occasion and I found myself able to engage easily with the other humans without the aid of the usual mix of cocktails and social anxiety.

I heard once that the experience of self has no physiology. It doesn't show up on brain scans or MRI's, it has no weight or chemical make-up, it is not represented by a chromosome or spiraling model of atoms. This state of self is elusive and it is ours alone to wrestle and often it is a struggle that seems endless and insurmountable. I feel strongly, it is the one thing in our lives that we have some control over even though at times it seems we are completely powerless over it. For the past 18 months I have been experimenting with decreasing my negative thoughts about myself, my work and pretty much everything and it's astounding how over time I have trained my mind to go in new directions to leave behind old pathways in search of better avenues. The more I do it the more these pathways present themselves, everything feels open and possible.

I had a dream recently, similar to the dreams I had in college about my teeth rotting. I woke up in the morning and tried to consider what the dream was about and why it had shown up again now. I was very happy in college and my life seemed to be laid out ahead of me full of possibility and so I took the dream to mean that I am again in that same space only I am older now and while there is still uncertainty and some fear of what lays ahead I can overcome it, I can go to the dentist, I can understand my self or selves as they shift and I can pilot myself forward in the direction, I alone want to go.

It's beginning to look a lot like something else.

2010-12-08T19:27:00.000-08:00

It's so weird, I am actually looking forward to the holidays. I feel myself easing into it, counting down the days. My mammoth letterpress job will get shipped off tomorrow. Through the whole process I have been finding time to knit my crazy micro sweaters and also start a new hat for Mark. I have a few presents identified for my little family and some ideas for other small offerings I want to make and give away.

This is the person I used to be, a thoughtful gift giver, a Christmas person. It feels good to be revisiting that long lost part of my self. I'm looking forward to doing a little baking for the family and decorating the house with hand-cut snowflakes. The lights are up already, I bought new LED ones, very fancy and energy efficient. I love that.

Mostly what I am noticing is that the heaviness I have felt for so long seems daily to be lifting and just when I think I'm feeling normal I feel a bit better. The more I do, the more I want to do, and in between I am able to feel at ease with what is happening around me.

Quickie

2010-12-06T10:51:00.000-08:00

I have 9 minutes to make a blog post. I have to get back to printing my annual pre-christmas job. It's been going well thanks to the miracle of polymer plates and friendly technical help from my friends at Bison. It was my birthday yesterday which didn't stop me from working. I love my work, let's face it and I feel good when I get things done so that is a gift. I had a nice day, a couple of friends came over and we ate and drank, two more things that are good to do. Mark put up the Christmas lights and suddenly I feel really good about the holidays, a strange sensation as it is not always the way. So I am buzzing with love from my family and friends, enjoying my work and the sun is even shining, not too shabby. Have a good week, I know I will.

Progress

2010-11-28T11:54:00.000-08:00

I started writing a post earlier this week about an iPhone app I had an idea for, of course it was a complete joke and I couldn't finish the post. I ran out of wit. This happens. What I did get done this week was a draft of a short story I have been trying to write for about 13 years. I meant to attend a writing retreat this summer but circumstances were against me and it didn't happen. Thanksgiving rolled around and circumstances redeemed themselves and I was able to stay home alone for 2 luscious days and write. It was indeed something to be thankful for.

FYI the app idea had to do with tracking a woman's menstrual cycle and it seemed really funny at the time. I feel so sorry for men who are clueless in the face of ever changing hormonal sands but when it got right down to it I felt pretty clueless myself so I moved on. Lucky you.

Crafty Update

2010-11-16T13:40:00.000-08:00

With Christmas rapidly approaching I am channeling my inner Martha and I have resurrected an idea I had last year. I saw some tiny sweater ornaments in the Garnet Hill catalog and decided I would like to make some of my own. Of course it was too close to Christmas last year when I had this bright idea (this often happens, I get very inspired to make things when confronted with all the delicious holiday offerings and then I get overwhelmed and do none of it) and so the tiny sweater idea has been laying dormant in a zip-loc bag in my knitting basket. This weekend the idea miraculously popped into my head and I seized on it. With the weather now firmly in crap mode it's good for a semi-deranged person such as myself to have something crafty to keep my hands busy. I knitted one on Sunday while watching a Jennifer Lopez movie, it was strangely invigorating. My goal is to knit a couple of these per week until Christmas and give them as gifts. Who doesn't like a new hand-made ornament now and then? I will make some tiny hangers and letterpress a little hang tag for them with this years date. Stay tuned there are more on the way. By the way, my inner Martha drinks and swears, a lot, so don't worry that I've gone over to the white side and am over achieving in the area of the domestic arts (picture of a sink full of dishes, to follow).

Take away

2010-11-13T19:30:00.000-08:00

Pablo Picasso (1881-1973) Chat Saisissant un oiseau 1939

Picasso's ghost is in town in the form of 150 pieces of the artworks he kept for himself, now belonging to the Musée Picasso de Paris. I dragged the kid to Seattle to take in the spectacle at SAM and it was spectacular. I threatened Pearl ahead of time, there was to be no whining, no asking when we could we leave, it was a museum crawl pure and simple, slow and steady, savoring every inch. I think she genuinely enjoyed it, at least she enjoyed the audio device that came with our admission.

When I started working on the Artists Way it suggested I take these art dates. I didn't, time is tight and it's hard to commit myself to such a luxurious activity. Time spent wandering through art filled galleries without husband and child isn't entirely feasible. Add to that a recent bout of anxiety it's amazing I made it at all. Anxiety is my shoes, lined up in the hall begging me to step in and experience a little fear. Thanks to Mark who is good at shaking me out of myself I went and felt okay, better than okay, I felt good.

The show was great, extensive, well paced and fascinating. What I took away from it all was the incredible willingness Picasso had to experiment with different styles and mediums. For some reason I have had it in my head that an artist needs to attach herself to one style and do that alone ad infinitum. Picasso dabbled, he made broad strokes and small scratches, he worked in clay like it was ink on paper, he documented his life and the times he lived in. He made art about love and sex and war and rape and he didn't always finish things but he always kept moving. Making, making no hesitation, no apology, moving forward, always making and this is what has inspired me the most.

My own art making process is in it's infancy and if I am not careful it will stay there. It's so easy to become self conscious, and then nothing is made. I have learned with writing the more I do it the more things emerge and that feels worthwhile, visual art is the same and slowly I am beginning to make things and to learn that nothing is precious or sacred, there are no wrong answers. Moving forward is the goal, making and trying, remaking, moving, moving always forward. Stepping back and watching to see what comes out of me is exciting, as we can do now in retrospect looking at the body of Picasso's work. Eight decades of his process, success and failure aside, the existence of the work is proof of his singular visual voice and the humanity that exists in us all.

Let it out.