This was the day Jackson and I got started on the reef series, colors that are found in the wedge just off the shore across the street from the house. The music was playing: the Canadian station that comes in pretty well, albeit a bit lacking in sound due to the smallness of the Casio speakers. Der Rosenkavalier was the last music played before I came back. Up to that point there was Liszt eulogizing Schubert and a series of chamber pieces that kept me dribbling the paint and thinking about my missed breakfast. I do feel a creative flow happening and I'm going with it.
Sue from next door came by and wanted to know the latest, thanking me for the hand-drawn Christmas card of a view of the gallery window. She's been gone visiting family in Oregon and said she couldn't stay because she needed to clean house and have her coffee. I couldn't offer coffee because I hadn't brought any down with me. I did have a Christmas spice tea to offer, and hot water for it, but she wanted her coffee. She looked chilly from being on the beach cleaning up the park where she does duty as the park officer. She stood by the fire and warmed herself and we talked a little about the co-op moving to the cannery building. The cannery building has been vacant for some years and sits just down the road from the Reef. Back in the day when people were catching more fish, the cannery did a pretty good business. When I was in high school, we could depend on a summer job there. I haven't been inside it in a good long while but one of my fellow Lions' members told about the conveyor system and how treacherous it looked. That would all have to be removed for use as a cooperative grocery store, which is all we have here.
When I had finished the series with Jackson Pollack as my muse, the last piece done on a small square of drywall, I rinsed up some more articles of the 'disappeared one' and hung them to dry on the rack in the bathtub. While doing so, I looked at the bathroom wall and thought of Robert Motherwell and his painting style. The main wall looked Motherwellish..in that it had streaked paint. I looked around for a paintbrush and there was one on the sink in a styrofoam cup so I got some of the lighter paint I'd been using on the Jackson series and proceeded to fill in the wall to my satisfaction. While I was at it, I got out the pickling stain and coated the vanity doors and towel rack. Then I washed down the cabinet doors above the toilet, removing the last of the former tenant's decoupage wild animals and pickle-stained those as well. I had been tiling in the shower surround but ran out of suitable tiles (a veritable melange of ornamental tile that has come to represent my need to applique in any form).
While the wet laundry steamed, I painted the bathroom wall. I was tempted to continue on to the bathroom door but held back on that because it was noon and I still hadn't eaten anything. Reluctantly I picked up the car keys (I don't really have to drive to the Reef, it's well within walking distance and there's even a bike there to get to and from but usually I drive and this morning it was raining) and headed home. There I took a shower, stoked the fire and dressed to go collect the mail. Once back from that little exercise, I made some fried potatoes and looked at the mail. It was the usual dreary credit card bills and the car insurance notice, which went up a tiny bit because of a repair made this year.
On the table sits a package from my diet pal from TOPS. I'm curious to see what it is but I got so few presents this year I'm not going to open it up directly, but let it simmer on the back burner while I contemplate making burritos and waiting for my neighbor to call and say the spaghetti is on. She mentioned yesterday she would probably be making spaghetti tonight and did I want to join her and her grandson for dinner. I always enjoy hanging out with them, the grandson spends a fair amount of time with me when his grandmother is called out to an ambulance run and his grandfather is off at work. He's like a quasi-grandchild of my own, as he's been with me since he was a little babe. He's going to be three in March. This week we made two cookies together with a number two cookie cutter. He actually sat down and ate a few of them with a juice box. I sent some home in a ziploc bag when his grandmother returned from the double ambulance call that had deposited him with me.
Now about the Pollack interface: I've been educated in the arts almost by default. I had a studio with my former husband, Tom Ashton, in the Adams Morgan neighborhood in Washington DC. Tommy was a student of the Corcorcan School. He interned with Bob Stackhouse and Mary Beth Edelsen. He and his former girlfriend, Laura Gregory, started an arts cooperative they named Madams Organ after the Adams Morgan neighborhood. I happened on Madams Organ when I separated from my first husband. I found an apartment in Mt Pleasant, right up from the National Zoo. Madams Organ was in the next neighborhood down. It seemed like a logical thing to do at the time: join an arts cooperative, let one of its members house sit while I came home to Sekiu for a visit. Lo and behold it came to pass that I married the house sitter and we had three children. All the time we were married, we talked about the meaning of art. We didn't discuss Jackson Pollack per se but were in on the new exhibits almost before they were open to the public. Some of the better known art dealers, like Leo Castelli, were always hovering in the background, keeping an eye on the doings of the radical bunch in Adams Morgan, the Madams Organ crew...who started the first punk rock venue and gave formal exhibits when not bouncing on the floor boards to groups like the Teen Idles. One morning I was scrubbing up after a Saturday gig at the gallery featuring no doubt the Bad Brains, our house band, and one of the members of the Cramps was sitting out on the front step looking like a Kabuki goth sadomasochist, leather to the ankles, black spike heels, teased up black hair and a motorcycle jacket. At the time I was eight months pregnant with my second son. It was a fresh, sunny morning...the Cramps lady, for she was in fact female, didn't say a word, maybe she was smoking a cigarette, I don't remember, only that the stark contrast of her appearance with the well-worn neighborhood of Adams Morgan as it was then relayed to me the notion that art is like that, it's why you hang it on the wall, because of the contrast of it and the reality of standing there looking at it. It's like the hand ticking off the minutes on the clock and records forever after what it means to say.
Still not too much towards the Pollack idea, other than the shock value of having one of the Cramps sitting on the front porch was not unlike looking at my first Pollack piece and I couldn't tell you the name of it, other than it was a lot of black enamel and red enamel on a canvas painted sometime in the 1950's. There was no structure to the brush work, other than the paint was drooling off the brush onto the canvas and didn't need the interface of the painter to apply the medium. It sprang into being just like the Cramps lady appeared on our doorstep when we were making a name for us in the world of punk. We did all shave our heads and dye our hair odd colors for a bit there. I think I had for a time the first 'mullet' because I'd finally grown my hair long enough to satisfy my urge to do that and then here comes this stylistic demand that we start using butch wax and wearing spikes. I compromised and only let them take the top part of my hair. My father-in-law said I looked like I'd been run over by a lawn mower. It was odd but that's what we were, what I am now. Self-expressive. We had ridden the curl of the wave, exploited the idea that we didn't need the help of the commercial art forum and were about to take off wherever destiny led us, only Henry from the Teen Idles made through the dark tunnel. The rest of us took our leave and went elsewhere. We painted, we still paint and my husband still has a grudge against the Corcoran School. He never got his diploma, though he was there five years. It would seem that we'd done our duty by the standard of art and whenver there was need of our effort, the Potomac Alliance when 3 mile Island started to leak, we were in the forefront being ourselves. There was some paranoia, but not much because we were wearing the shoes of those who went before us. We made do with bin diving and cast-offs from Fields of Plenty, the neighborhood food coop right near our house. We could have had respectable jobs being art teachers, clerical support or whathave you but because we didnt have diplomas, we made do. We took tickets at the movie theater and made movies about things like the FBI guys beating up our cardboard g-man when the new FBI building opened and left Justice in its wake. How this is like Jackson Pollack would have to be that he started it, him and others like him, drooling paint and not even trying for abstract like Picasso did. What is it about abstract art anyway? Notably, the scene painter, Thomas Kinkaid, who enjoys a popular following, would be far from the maddening crowd of us would-be limelighters but he too had a muse I discovered when I recently watched the Lifetime movie on his evolving as a painter. That's what we were to one another in the Madams Organ cooperative and I just hear my exhusband criticizing me now for even talking about it. Well, let him. He and I had some rather violent arguments about art and he would tell me mean things like 'you just want to be rich and famous'. I doubt that's what it's really about. I think Pollack and Jasper Johns and people like them, note I leave out Andi Warhol because he had a hard enough time being himself let alone making art to count as one whose work has that purity of synthesis the painters of the 50's did. Not that Warhol isn't up there and in it too, just a different time. Pollack and Johns and I should say Rauschenberg too because that one is a favorite of mine were the creators of a venue we 3rd-generation Color School avante gardists chose to follow. We did street theater, held impromtu fetes involving cheap beer and gusty poetry, rattled chains at the snow and watched one another face the challenge that was our art. Being a Catholic I had the training to self-examine myself to my soul in order to prepare for a good confession. With art it was staring at the canvas, hearing the music, doing the dance and trying to tell oneself you weren't playing at being extremely foolish but did have something important to say.
So how I got here to the Reef and my own studio and setting up a painting cycle that begins with an homage to Pollack and progresses to more formalized work like that I do with my painting circle, the Messy Palettes, is what I intend to explore here, a day before New Year's Eve, when I'm at the crossroads of my own life, my first granddaughter, no real life partner to speak of, a very aged mother, deceased dad and brother, two brothers married, only one with children, and three living children that are quite a blessing to me in so many ways although oddly they'll call from time to time and tell me I've committed an unforgiveable boo-boo and I just don't know how I ever did that, only to say that perhaps it's payback for sitting on the porch with the kabukized lady Cramps member. Like trying to plug into a two-twenty line in real time some of the far out notions of art and what it means. Pollack was very much on the vanguard of that notion and I find my painting tends to float that way as well. It's my way of coping with my mother repeating herself within ten minutes of the initial statement she makes in a conversation. It's my response to my batchelor brother's caring for her and observing that he exhibits the initial signs of Parkinson's disease. It's not something you can change, these things that happen, but you can react to them and that is what painting does for me. I don't paint tranquil little river scenes like the ladies of the Messy Palettes brigade, but I do my fair share of pine trees and daisies and odd little cartoony drawings that I've always done. I do odes to nature for here more than anywhere I've been, nature is in the forefront, leading the way. The tides and seasons are vigorous and abusive of human inhabitants but it can't be helped. It's not Newfoundland but it's close. It's rugged. So is Pollack's take on art. Just do it...was that Abbie Hoffman said that? Probably.
Wednesday, December 30, 2009
Monday, December 28, 2009
of course the newness of this has its kinks....
meaning that adding photographs...which you want to have that synthesis that includes the ability to produce a photograph in keeping with the intent of your writing...hermmmmhumphhh...somehow some of the relatives got into the mix...in a picture that was merely recording the nephew's high school graduation...not talking about the topic here, nor intending to promote it...which, if truth be told, hasn't been arrived at yet, but could revolve around the fact I need to get out to the backyard and build a fence that keeps the dogs in so my neighbor isn't calling me while I'm away to tell me they've been rescued from the highway...yes, I can do that, but as with art and other pursuits, you can't get all the chores done before it hits you and you have to act on it...and being a multimedia artist, I find that jumping into an acting skit is about the easiest, fun thing to do, limbering and liberating, allowing the spirit and soul to speak freely in a place where all is encumbered by other people's feelings relative to your own...'you said that about me??' well I didn't did I? and I wouldn't...because I spoke about that in the earlier post...what it means in terms of family...here it is about what it is that you have to do when it comes on you to do it...and nice that I live alone for now...because there isn't anyone to tell me something else is more important
like the last long-term affair...that never stopped being inefficient on many levels...talk about sponged-bob with square pants...square as in I will join alcoholics anonymous because I drink beer...not 'because I drink beer in a plastic cup on the way home from work' which he did, but because he had so much of it around that he was drinking it because it was there...and he didn't soul search about it either, he was not using it as a bandaid that way...but rather joined AA so he could meet women...hehe...now THERE is a goofy prospect...I'm a mess so I'll find someone else who is also a mess and see if we can be messed up together...so he went off and I have three dogs instead, and somehow they're getting out of the backyard and I have to make sure they don't, because the highway is right out the front door...so that's the project for today except that I've discovered I can write today...talk about having a block on it...it's like, who'd want to hear about your exploits, sucker? and then boom, you don't care if they do or not...rather interested to see if it's saleable material actually, because what I've noticed is that when you write about something other people relate to, like how much mustard SHOULD I put on that baloney sandwich...people read it..and frankly, the minutest details..I put my foot on the floor after having it cramped up against the base of the chair for the last ten minutes...they think that's neat because they do that too...whatever it is..riding the subway on a really hot summer day and the heat in the car is enough to make grit of your sweat sitting there bumping along...what I wouldn't give for a hot subway car about now...and how far am I from a subway car right now...quite a distance, but I've been on them...
so, the timeframes and such, like being up in Vermont for New Years and getting snowed in with friends in Bennington, now that's a very quaint White Christmas sort of experience that doesn't relate at all to what happened this year with the nursing home piano recital and most of the audience in wheelchairs, drooling. I brought along my canary because he wouldn't have fared well in the chilly house. I played Hungarian Dance #2 by Liszt and by the end of it I was playing with one finger (terrible terrible stage fright). The canary entertained the elderly nursing home residents and cocoa was served, along with cookies, tea, coffee and punch, I believe. The other performers were all much much younger than I and they all played Christmas carols. I rather thought the 'God Whose Giving Knows No Ending' sounded like a Christmas carol and perhaps at the drizzling out of this inspiration of mine, I might go play it, but I think I'll tackle the dog fence instead and be sensible. It's after noon, 12:28 and so that would be productive of me but having gotten up so early after going to bed so early my schedule is off so I feel a little tired now...deflated somehow that I was able to write and write and then went off to Mermaid's Reef and got the place warmed up a bit..
Seems strange to have a studio but I knew when I painted that last canvas that this is what the Reef is..and though I may live there at some point, what it does for me is conduct art...I can see a nice piano in the front room by the window (don't you know I tried to take photos when I was just there and the batteries were drained so I couldn't)..Murphy's Law of relativity...functional computer ethic is logic put aside due to random access memory heh heh heh...
Those batteries went in the camera last Thursday and every picture I took was so wiggly you can't really tell what's up...well you can, but eh, you can't...
So I guess I gotta go do that again..maybe that's what I should do first...put in new batteries, go take pictures of the Reef and THEN after it's loaded in here..do the dog fence...right...like I shouldn't be plugging away behind the cash register at Walmart or something..
Never had a cashier job, other than the one I had in the French Restaurant that wasn't really a French restaurant but a satellite of the Kansas City Stockyard Company which employed a chef that had learned his trade in Paris...that place in Paris that turns out the luminaries..well, Cordon Bleu? perhaps that was the joint. I shouldn't be disrespectful because his were the only poached brains I ever ate and his name was Pierre Pluminage. The authorities had that place on their regular rounds for routing illegal immigrants and every so often we'd have a new set of dishwashers and carrot choppers. A couple of the hired help fell in love and grew an avocado together. They were reverent in their mutual adoration of one another. It was touching and they didn't speak English, either of them, so I didn't know the particulars but I observed how they behaved with one another and it didn't surprise me at all that she turned up pregnant and he got carried off to Mexico in one of the sweeps. Dang. I didn't find it heartbreaking because even then I was kind of innoculated against real life and real people. What I did know was that somewhere in there, maybe a year or two later, 'Orlando' Letellier and his assistant Randy Moffitt got blown up in a foreign-make car, maybe a little BMW..going around Thomas Circle. On that same circle is GW Hospital where, riding the bus to work one day the driver swung into the emergency entrance at the hospital because my friend and neighbor was in labor and also a passenger. I came home from work that day and she was on the deck of her apartment waving to me with a new baby in her arms.
"Only in the hospital an hour," she said.
"From the time you got off the bus?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Wow," was all I could say, either about the infant or her delivery.
So that's some of the ancient history of life back east but that's now the Reef and what goes on in and about art. You can wear your little painters' smock, put on that beanie that's your thinking cap...hold a palette in one hand and brush in the other, stare dead ahead at a blank canvas and all the time be wondering...if I let the dogs outside are they going to run around the neighborhood because I didn't secure them...or what?
Meaning that distractions from the point in hand, that you have this overriding need to express and communicate some kind of idea...be it something about a child born in 1972, making him thirty some years old now or Allende's attempt to bring rationalization to Chile (not sure if it wasn't Argentina but the Movie Missing with Jack Lemon bothered me forever after, not to mention the Life articles about the soccer arenas, that really got me upset)...which I wanted to do something about but rather thought the instantaneous birth of my neighbor and fellow passenger's child had more than a little to do with all of it...which art would explain...as only it could and reason would persist and justice would prevail
I don't know if we can justify Pinochet or Samoza or El Salvador or Guatemala and I had a terrible falling out with someone from Honduras so I should leave that stuff alone other than to say that a friend of mine went to Nicaraugua and became the house guest of a family with a 15-year old daughter. Didn't hear anything from him other than that. Didn't think it was odd either, we just thought, hmmm 15 year old daughter, hmmm... He didn't say if the banana plants were growing in cracks in the sidewalks like they do down Brownsville Padre Island way (where I've been and noticed)...he didn't say if his patrons had running water (he'd gone there to help put some plumbing in place in some communities)...I don't think I've ever run into him since he went to Nicauragua and I better look on the map and see where that is because I'm thinking it's somewhere around Mexico and maybe it's not, hehe...
Meanwhile...it's nearly one and perhaps the bloom is now off the rose in terms of writing and writing. I don 't have any current information to share other than the Reef is up and r unning and I should be doing this from there but I've only done one painting there and Lord knows writing takes a bit more courage not to mention internet access but I co uld do it on a drive disk and plug it back in, the attic is full of computer rejects that dim the lights when booting up, hehe...so be it...dog fence to the rescue
It's like three or four days since Christmas and the last few years have been rough: the poodle died two years ago and broke my heart...last year the foster kids threw their turkey dinner in the drain and I had to call the cops because I thought they were going to beat me up ...that was funny, the cops told them to behave and told me to make them something else to eat, which I did but I had a flame of anger in my heart and eventually that fanned up into a blaze when they beat up the dog..I guess you can't be nice to everyone but those guys, well, I miss them this Christmas and didn't put up a tree because they weren't here. Didn't light up the tree outside either, nor did I get to do a shopping extravaganza but things change...the dogs had beef jerky and toys in their stocking, I got to hold my granddaughter in her beautiful white gown and wipe her nose when the snot bubbled. There's something about babies, they have a personality all to themselves and while they trust you to care for them, there's this invisble force there as well that's holding the fort. Not like you could drop them on their head and they'd bounce back but that they integrate with you on a level that is symbiotic and what you do cares for their needs in a way that cares for yours as well. They don't communicate through their voice as much as they use their entire body, like a sort of macro unit, toes, eyes fingers, hair, diaper, the whole schmeel and they know when you don't dig it as well. I saw several kids scream at the sight of Santa this year, and my granddaughter was one of them. Not that Santa didn't dig her, but it was Christmas Eve and at Silverdale Mall and imagine how many kids he'd already listened to. I think she was giving him a break..
"Ok, you can pass over me because Grandma is here and I don't get to see her all that much so I'd just as soon she hold me because she listens to everything I say..."
Santa was a pretty good egg about it...they managed to take some shots of those kids without the little screamer screaming and they all got peppermint sticks and a coloring book. Somehow I ended up with Myah's.
MMM, now the thought of my only grandbaby makes me kind of teary and I should get on with other things...life included. All three dogs are asleep around the fire, which is where I wou ld be if I had any gumption but I'm a dedicated life liver and that includes keeping pets out of the road. Some two by fours, a hammmer, gloves for the weather..nails...ahh...nails have been pretty well purloined by getting the Reef up to snuff..hmmm, might mean cleaning up the garage to find some nails...gosh is it going to rain...who cares...dogs have to get out and they don't need to be walked if the backyard is secure...secure...what a word..
a word for another day...
like the last long-term affair...that never stopped being inefficient on many levels...talk about sponged-bob with square pants...square as in I will join alcoholics anonymous because I drink beer...not 'because I drink beer in a plastic cup on the way home from work' which he did, but because he had so much of it around that he was drinking it because it was there...and he didn't soul search about it either, he was not using it as a bandaid that way...but rather joined AA so he could meet women...hehe...now THERE is a goofy prospect...I'm a mess so I'll find someone else who is also a mess and see if we can be messed up together...so he went off and I have three dogs instead, and somehow they're getting out of the backyard and I have to make sure they don't, because the highway is right out the front door...so that's the project for today except that I've discovered I can write today...talk about having a block on it...it's like, who'd want to hear about your exploits, sucker? and then boom, you don't care if they do or not...rather interested to see if it's saleable material actually, because what I've noticed is that when you write about something other people relate to, like how much mustard SHOULD I put on that baloney sandwich...people read it..and frankly, the minutest details..I put my foot on the floor after having it cramped up against the base of the chair for the last ten minutes...they think that's neat because they do that too...whatever it is..riding the subway on a really hot summer day and the heat in the car is enough to make grit of your sweat sitting there bumping along...what I wouldn't give for a hot subway car about now...and how far am I from a subway car right now...quite a distance, but I've been on them...
so, the timeframes and such, like being up in Vermont for New Years and getting snowed in with friends in Bennington, now that's a very quaint White Christmas sort of experience that doesn't relate at all to what happened this year with the nursing home piano recital and most of the audience in wheelchairs, drooling. I brought along my canary because he wouldn't have fared well in the chilly house. I played Hungarian Dance #2 by Liszt and by the end of it I was playing with one finger (terrible terrible stage fright). The canary entertained the elderly nursing home residents and cocoa was served, along with cookies, tea, coffee and punch, I believe. The other performers were all much much younger than I and they all played Christmas carols. I rather thought the 'God Whose Giving Knows No Ending' sounded like a Christmas carol and perhaps at the drizzling out of this inspiration of mine, I might go play it, but I think I'll tackle the dog fence instead and be sensible. It's after noon, 12:28 and so that would be productive of me but having gotten up so early after going to bed so early my schedule is off so I feel a little tired now...deflated somehow that I was able to write and write and then went off to Mermaid's Reef and got the place warmed up a bit..
Seems strange to have a studio but I knew when I painted that last canvas that this is what the Reef is..and though I may live there at some point, what it does for me is conduct art...I can see a nice piano in the front room by the window (don't you know I tried to take photos when I was just there and the batteries were drained so I couldn't)..Murphy's Law of relativity...functional computer ethic is logic put aside due to random access memory heh heh heh...
Those batteries went in the camera last Thursday and every picture I took was so wiggly you can't really tell what's up...well you can, but eh, you can't...
So I guess I gotta go do that again..maybe that's what I should do first...put in new batteries, go take pictures of the Reef and THEN after it's loaded in here..do the dog fence...right...like I shouldn't be plugging away behind the cash register at Walmart or something..
Never had a cashier job, other than the one I had in the French Restaurant that wasn't really a French restaurant but a satellite of the Kansas City Stockyard Company which employed a chef that had learned his trade in Paris...that place in Paris that turns out the luminaries..well, Cordon Bleu? perhaps that was the joint. I shouldn't be disrespectful because his were the only poached brains I ever ate and his name was Pierre Pluminage. The authorities had that place on their regular rounds for routing illegal immigrants and every so often we'd have a new set of dishwashers and carrot choppers. A couple of the hired help fell in love and grew an avocado together. They were reverent in their mutual adoration of one another. It was touching and they didn't speak English, either of them, so I didn't know the particulars but I observed how they behaved with one another and it didn't surprise me at all that she turned up pregnant and he got carried off to Mexico in one of the sweeps. Dang. I didn't find it heartbreaking because even then I was kind of innoculated against real life and real people. What I did know was that somewhere in there, maybe a year or two later, 'Orlando' Letellier and his assistant Randy Moffitt got blown up in a foreign-make car, maybe a little BMW..going around Thomas Circle. On that same circle is GW Hospital where, riding the bus to work one day the driver swung into the emergency entrance at the hospital because my friend and neighbor was in labor and also a passenger. I came home from work that day and she was on the deck of her apartment waving to me with a new baby in her arms.
"Only in the hospital an hour," she said.
"From the time you got off the bus?" I asked.
She nodded.
"Wow," was all I could say, either about the infant or her delivery.
So that's some of the ancient history of life back east but that's now the Reef and what goes on in and about art. You can wear your little painters' smock, put on that beanie that's your thinking cap...hold a palette in one hand and brush in the other, stare dead ahead at a blank canvas and all the time be wondering...if I let the dogs outside are they going to run around the neighborhood because I didn't secure them...or what?
Meaning that distractions from the point in hand, that you have this overriding need to express and communicate some kind of idea...be it something about a child born in 1972, making him thirty some years old now or Allende's attempt to bring rationalization to Chile (not sure if it wasn't Argentina but the Movie Missing with Jack Lemon bothered me forever after, not to mention the Life articles about the soccer arenas, that really got me upset)...which I wanted to do something about but rather thought the instantaneous birth of my neighbor and fellow passenger's child had more than a little to do with all of it...which art would explain...as only it could and reason would persist and justice would prevail
I don't know if we can justify Pinochet or Samoza or El Salvador or Guatemala and I had a terrible falling out with someone from Honduras so I should leave that stuff alone other than to say that a friend of mine went to Nicaraugua and became the house guest of a family with a 15-year old daughter. Didn't hear anything from him other than that. Didn't think it was odd either, we just thought, hmmm 15 year old daughter, hmmm... He didn't say if the banana plants were growing in cracks in the sidewalks like they do down Brownsville Padre Island way (where I've been and noticed)...he didn't say if his patrons had running water (he'd gone there to help put some plumbing in place in some communities)...I don't think I've ever run into him since he went to Nicauragua and I better look on the map and see where that is because I'm thinking it's somewhere around Mexico and maybe it's not, hehe...
Meanwhile...it's nearly one and perhaps the bloom is now off the rose in terms of writing and writing. I don 't have any current information to share other than the Reef is up and r unning and I should be doing this from there but I've only done one painting there and Lord knows writing takes a bit more courage not to mention internet access but I co uld do it on a drive disk and plug it back in, the attic is full of computer rejects that dim the lights when booting up, hehe...so be it...dog fence to the rescue
It's like three or four days since Christmas and the last few years have been rough: the poodle died two years ago and broke my heart...last year the foster kids threw their turkey dinner in the drain and I had to call the cops because I thought they were going to beat me up ...that was funny, the cops told them to behave and told me to make them something else to eat, which I did but I had a flame of anger in my heart and eventually that fanned up into a blaze when they beat up the dog..I guess you can't be nice to everyone but those guys, well, I miss them this Christmas and didn't put up a tree because they weren't here. Didn't light up the tree outside either, nor did I get to do a shopping extravaganza but things change...the dogs had beef jerky and toys in their stocking, I got to hold my granddaughter in her beautiful white gown and wipe her nose when the snot bubbled. There's something about babies, they have a personality all to themselves and while they trust you to care for them, there's this invisble force there as well that's holding the fort. Not like you could drop them on their head and they'd bounce back but that they integrate with you on a level that is symbiotic and what you do cares for their needs in a way that cares for yours as well. They don't communicate through their voice as much as they use their entire body, like a sort of macro unit, toes, eyes fingers, hair, diaper, the whole schmeel and they know when you don't dig it as well. I saw several kids scream at the sight of Santa this year, and my granddaughter was one of them. Not that Santa didn't dig her, but it was Christmas Eve and at Silverdale Mall and imagine how many kids he'd already listened to. I think she was giving him a break..
"Ok, you can pass over me because Grandma is here and I don't get to see her all that much so I'd just as soon she hold me because she listens to everything I say..."
Santa was a pretty good egg about it...they managed to take some shots of those kids without the little screamer screaming and they all got peppermint sticks and a coloring book. Somehow I ended up with Myah's.
MMM, now the thought of my only grandbaby makes me kind of teary and I should get on with other things...life included. All three dogs are asleep around the fire, which is where I wou ld be if I had any gumption but I'm a dedicated life liver and that includes keeping pets out of the road. Some two by fours, a hammmer, gloves for the weather..nails...ahh...nails have been pretty well purloined by getting the Reef up to snuff..hmmm, might mean cleaning up the garage to find some nails...gosh is it going to rain...who cares...dogs have to get out and they don't need to be walked if the backyard is secure...secure...what a word..
a word for another day...
early am searching for old news...new twists..
well, fingers are nearly fro.zen/dig it...(af)fro.zen...relating to the coding (dumb ol..duh)...figuring out what the new studio space is supposed to do for me...listening to Gracia Ruby the yapper dog tell the world 'yes, we'reup now'...mmhmm
best go check the fire anyway...have this half the house blocked off since there are no munchkins here at the moment, clearing throat...GR might know more about that one
hehe
posted a little reminder about the 'glad he ate her' joke at Vanity/Glamour...which is a secondary beauty magazine considering Vogue, which has to wade through quite a bit of 'it' in order to promote healthy beauty...well, what IS healthy beauty anyway, male or female and why the f is it important, think it is about the f factor now and then...like darn...hehe, what is it about certain males that give me the sensation I have thrombosis...uh duh...some little eggo (leggo) is getting set to hatch, probably
ok, that's the rambling on factor and haven't related code to butt to rise and shove another log on the flames...not that it would help...free kin (dle)...I did love working in WORD...well the .dll factor as far as getting up to do the thing...
actually I did it...was researching sixties model Shrimpton earlier found nothing on her current physical status, i.e., the photography which I thought she had the incandescent look of the sixties about her but then again, hard to know from a photograph who's a real meal deal and who's not but I know as a teenager I would look on that image and see myself, it was my concept of me, well, I don't know a model today that relates as well and Shrimpton didn't make me go out and buy dresses because I sewed them all - we'd look at the model books and pick out which we would like to wear and then we'd make them, the fabrics were spectacular, there was this one red bouqueted hopsacking number I loved for years and years, went through my first pregnancy in it, got shortened when I loaned it out and came back a mini which was ok but after that it had lost its bloom, and the tiger/leopard cordoroys that followed hip and thigh and calf to the max down to the turned up/hemmed ankle made in less than an hour, cutting to sewing to hemming, by the primo seamstress of the group (at the time) and she was wearing them out the door by the time the bell rang...imagine...they were leopard cordoroy capris and she had hair like Cher, the bangs and all...
meanwhile, we were all into minis which is fine in winter weather if you have the maxicoat to cover the kneecaps when you step out the door, also I think the thigh high boot is good if you're being practical and you're going where they're not trying to seed winter corn or some such and can shed whatever doesn't need to stay on..well, last years news all that but I went and did my hair based on a gloppy stuff that you get to do yourself when the hairdresser is back in VietNam for a sabbatical...hehe, yeah right...and it came out like a yellow marble cake with a neon orange tinge at the front part, well, such is the image reflection...wondering about letting color go and just stick with the hairspray that touts a lightening effect...oh not bolts or nothing...but some kind of a lemon juice deal that works as it sets there (sits there)
so, as this is the initiating news blurb from Studio Mermaids Reef...think of this as the lady that bought the house that I have the hot tub motor from...gimmee a shell...gimmee a shell..hehe, that's after I build on the nice little solarium with all the plants that sprout from my green thumb...and are shivering as I am this cold winter morning...burrr it's raining but it could as well be snow..I've done my angst bit about that and probably want to go down there right now and settle up the heat factor with a little log on the fire (or two)
so...kind of don't want to beat around the bush about anything, other than to say haven't yet seen Avatar but everyone else has and they're raving, well, that $12 ticket is kinda steep but you get these 3-d glasses so those are the souvenirs and you are witnessing art on the level you won't get when you bring the baby home and plug it in your cinemamaster state of the art whatever you got giant tv thing (HD/BLURAY whathaveyou)...myself I got this speaker handbuilt from back in the day that still has the clarity of a morning warbler on the river...the little .wavs just bouncing off the water in the slough...it's great (the woofs and tweets are all in their places one would guess)...I would say the pixel factor isn't what it could be, screen wise is on the tiny side but I've had room size and so on and projectors and so whats and that's a mechanical issue still in process but programming the elements on use has been interesting, hehe...bird get off the wire...well, that's fun and who sits around for television all that much...or movies, it's so transient, you can practically put your hand right through it, you come away with images lodged inyour mind that give you impetus to move to your next task/occupation/process...well, that's the good part, that's art as we now know it...though Titian's light factor has yet to be replicated I would think and that's an essential to any form of art...that the impression on the viewer side be kin to the creator's...we are of the same mind here...Avatar people..so I'm wondering about the Reef's garden, if I come away from seeing Avatar as a planet saver or what? a strange flock of birds flew up out of there one day when I was rescuing the garden hose from the clutches of the water iris that had overgrown it...unhand ye the sprinkler dudes...and I thought, bird sanctuary...hmmm there isn't that much of it and I was thinking Koi...how about major fish named Dim Son...like we've got this puppy named Spider Man...oh, it could be halibut in there, they do hatch at the mouth of the Clallam...and they're cute but koi would belong there I think...ode to Koi
koi fish reside
harbor view
abide
gentle rain and cool
be my school
I dunno, always feel kind of dumb plunking down keys like that and writing stuff your brothers are going to tease you about...clears throat...should they ever get on the internet...heh heh...actually I've had one or two candid conversations with those guys, hahaha, and we always leave off talking about the things that we hold dearest because to one another, that's what we are...I hope I said that well
I'll see about the price of rice in china here shortly, i.e., set the fire at MR and go do the rest of the day thing but darn that's about being an artist, you wake up at the ungodly hour of 4am because it's in you, this idea gestating itself inside your head and nothing else really matters but that you find it a medium...darn difficult when you might dance it out, or just think it through over and over...where does it go...what, in fact, is it...has teaching come into it...(wunsun is going through that process and it's actually a viable technique as well since he's deep into purple, hehe)
eh...we ought to all be in the amazon rainforest at the moment I think...toasting our toes and clad in tongs...I best be on my way to the rest of the day although I think I could sit here and talk to the keyboard/screen until what...had to put another log on the fire, the phone rang...someone knocked at the door? something...my fingers got NUMB!! that would be it...sun has poked through the whatevers and it's not actually shining but there's enough light to see that it will be a steel gray day with no cloud definition other than to say the pavement is wet and it's not quite cold enough to snow...no if people wouldn't keep bringing firecrackers onto airplanes I might want to travel somewhere warmer and how did they do that anyway? because it's not gooey or liquid...how is one going to discern powdery substances?
so...mermaids reef it is...the art home...the place that needs a solarium bad and the pond/swamp for the koi isn't the entire backyard but a hole where the water seeps in and stays put and Wunsun and his crew:Dimsun and Beccawu (giving the fish names but I wonder if I'll just reimport the Walmart diehards that I used to raise and let it go at that...) neighboring cats have already set up an efficient prowl that Gracie R and her crew are going to have to temper with a birdsong from tweetie's bunch...
should I be talking about the rescued hydrangea or the fact that I've not yet put the reisling in its place but have decided that Michelina Haus will keep it's namesake and there will be a sortofabordeaux/burgundy/mideastern kind of name red...like that wonderfully jewel-like Belle Haven from long ago...I just don't know about the heartiness of the sun although I'm sure the shells are ample and the little slope just right...meanwhile Sid says come back in the spring he'll have a few to chose from...told him about this and that and he was as hearty as ever it was an oral surgery day for me and wow did the burger scrape its way down the tract...ouchie
I guess I could look online, hehe
now isn't that a roundabout way of going at it...meanwhile, will need some stamps and mailoff the phone billl and go start the fire there and think about painting another color exercise like the one over in Bellingham in the basement, that I really liked...there's so many nice cans of paint but I'm not the world's greatest carpenter and saws daunt me not to mention finding the right nail...and have one numb thumb from hammering...clears throat...well...pity...self...time for a log on the fire...
oh yeah and it was christmas and to all those I forget to personally greet and thank and so on...imagine the art that comes from places like mermaids reef and you know I haven't overlooked you but found a wonderful way to climb into each and everyone's head...i.e. lets get the log on the fire and the day on the road...here's to 2020...my daughter gets married on the day Crowe's movie releases..does this mean I need to iron? another Koi name..WuSee
Iwikeit
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