Me now

 

My dad somehow saw this picture of me on LinkedIn and sent me the following note via email:

Well its a good photo of a serious professional like you see on Linkedin.

Bears little resemblance to the Rowan we raised through all those years.

Just your professional visage facing the market place.

Evolution I guess.

Love Dad. 

 I think this is who he remembers. I'm on the right. : )

Validation

I made this for a book cover I was working on but ultimately it was just an excuse to play a little bit with painting on chip board, some collage with lovely green images cut out of Vanity Fair. I made the photo of myself in my office. I like the back view, it is our most unfamiliar view of ourselves and I think represents all we don't know about ourselves. The brown leather suitcase was my mothers. She kept all her important documents in it. I should consider keeping her ashes in this case instead of the cardboard box where they currently reside. So many things to do. I was cleaning the studio tonight, the ritual reclamation of the creative space and the return to it. I made this piece when the weather was still warm and it came out as a burst, unselfconsciously. Because it was not chosen for the book cover, I cast it aside and then due to occurrences this week when I came across it tonight I decided to accept it as a valid creation. I have been reconnecting with some long time ago contacts in my field and that has set me to thinking about the nature of this work I do and helps me to see all that I have done and how to make it better. It's a time of gentleness.

Layering

Painting detail 5/25/12

Last Thursday I burned the red beans I was cooking while a man was rumored to be holding his family hostage a few miles from my house. I imagined at gun-point. On Friday with my skin still smelling of the burned beans I melted down and spent the weekend puffy-eyed and pale while my family simultaneously stroked my hair and avoided me. As scary as my mood swings are to me they must be terrifying to those around me. On Sunday I confided to my dad that I had been having a rough week. He has these rough patches too, we all do. On the bright side I did not hurt myself or take anyone hostage, and after a few rounds of Bananagrams Friday night we were able to laugh about the debacle of the day, the misunderstandings, and I think we may have all experienced teachable moments. I slept so hard that night that I didn't know where I was and on Saturday morning when I visited my stepmother and suddenly found myself trying to hack up a lung like I had TB, my stepmother who is struggling to get her words organized easily uttered "pollen". I agreed because it felt too hard to say no, it's a chunk of grief passing through me, but I feel certain I am going to be okay.

During my painting class on Friday I could feel myself relaxing into the work. The technique seen here involves creating a quick and simple gestural layer followed by subsequent layers of warm and cool colors all applied with tons of water. It's pure magic watching the image emerge.

Brief Explanation from Inside

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.

Derailed

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.

Storytelling

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.

Normal Social Anxiety

Social anxiety is a pain in the ass. I think we all have it to some degree. In the worst cases people just give up putting themselves in situations where these nasty feelings are triggered. As part of my little recovery program I am working on dealing with these feelings and it seems to be working because last night I went to a party and actually danced. I have not danced in years which is a real tragedy because dancing is fun and considering my enormous size I think I am an okay dancer. When I was in college I danced all the time. My fellow art students and I would drink Long Island Ice Teas at the Coconut Teaser on Sunset Blvd and we drove the boys a little bit wild. It was great. Then I got married and somehow we stopped going out and we never danced and then I started to develop the evil pattern of social anxiety that has been strangling me ever since.

Here's my plan. I don't worry ahead about the outing even if I happen to dream about it the night before. When I am there I work on being a good conversationalist, I like listening to what other people have to say and I have plenty to say myself, so that part is easy. I turn off my monkey brain that shouts insults at me and I take into consideration that everyone else at the party feels a bit nervous about something so we're all basically even. Then, and this is key, on the way home, I don't berate myself about what I did or didn't do or say I just think about how much fun it was. And man it was fun.

Blog Check In

I have been meaning to blog but haven't. Have not had a lot compelling or even funny to say. I can usually fall back on funny. Life is good. The heat wave ended and it rained but that was okay. It was sunny again today and really humid. My car windows are all broken which was awful because the dog got into something nasty and had the worst farts. It's late and I want to lay down and watch the final episode of Mad Men Season 1 in preparation for the 3rd season which begins this Saturday, so in lieu of actually writing which demands actual thinking I am posting my horoscope, which I feel explains everything.


You are currently getting more miles per gallon and more bang for the buck than you have in a long time. Your IQ is creeping higher. Your knack for scoring good parking places is at a peak. I'll even go so far as to say that it's been quite a while since you've been teased by such thoroughly useful temptations. And get this, Sagittarius: I suspect that you have an enhanced instinct for taking smart risks. The only downside of all this good news is that you may not know your own strength. That means you should test it fast; find out more about its potential. Otherwise, you might break someone's heart by accident, or prematurely shatter the illusions of a person who's not yet ready to stop living in fantasyland.
http://www.freewillastrology.com/ Thanks Bob, Thanks Susan.

I just have to say I am really fucking happy and it feels good. I think it's been about 23 years since I felt this good, only I think I feel better now than I did then, because I know so much more now, about everything. So keep on rockin' is all I can say, fall will be here soon enough and there will be more writing to read, more pages to turn etc…