Another grim day, wet, cold, heavy cloud cover, brrr... Radio is talking about relief efforts in Haiti, which I haven't been following: an earthquake?
Yesterday I attended a yoga session and did the mountain pose and the tree pose and a couple sitting on the floor exercises I would call variations on a wheelbarrow pose. It felt good to stretch. When I started out, my right arm felt as though it had been pulled from its socket. By the time it was over, I felt rather limber. There were about ten of us and the instructor, a pert lady who's in town for a couple of months. We'll see where she goes after that. This place grows on you, like moss on the roof. You get it in your system and you never lose it. I suppose that doing yoga is like that. It's been recommended to me for quite a while now and like the other milestones of my life, I'm into it. There was a comment by the instructor that we wouldn't need to contribute for the building rental, so the little money I had with me won't be needed after all. It's consquently going in the ice cream fund.
Angel is here for wedding planning. This is exciting to me because I haven't seen her since last May. We talk a lot on the phone, keeping up with our daily lives as best we can. She's anxious about being married but the plans are working out smoothly and we'll see the site this weekend: Cedar Springs, in Gig Harbor. I'm going to stay with her future in-laws, who just built a new house. I could get ahold of my brother's family while I'm there but I don't know if I want to do that because I'm the relative that crashes on the couch now and again. I'm bringing along a sleeping bag and pillow and will curl up in whatever corner in the new house that they provide me. I might also run up to b'ham to get the canvasses Tony has been making me. I'm about run through the Pollack series, even watched a movie on Jackson which I will discuss further a bit later on here. I realized on a drive to Forks yesterday how deeply attached I am to my children. I will absorb my time with Angel and use it to fortify myself for days like this one, where everything is dim and soggy and in need of attention at every turn. I want to dress well for Angel's future relatives. I've been sorting clothes since 6 am this morning, finding just the right things to wear for the time of year, as well as thinking of being comfortable on the road. I plan to bring an apple pie we made Monday. We've already had one of them and they were very good. I hope they'll enjoy it.
I'm dressed in my bohemian beatnik gear this morning: Beatle boots, jeans (de rigeur), a huge horizontally striped loose-knit long-sleeve turtleneck sweater in rainbow stripes, a black beanie. Last night I went to the Reef after yoga and worked on the last in the Pollack series. It's still on the drawing board. The rest of the pictures I hung around the house. One actually got into a frame and is under glass. I think it will go to the Sekiu Post Office. I can't think of what the piece for the Clallam Bay Post Office will be. I have a nice color pencil drawing of a movie scene I sketched: Feather River, featuring cowboys and saloon gals but I wanted to give that to John when he comes home the week after Angel. So I'm still up in the air on that one. I hadn't realized that we hang in both the Post Offices. I don't recall ever putting a picture in the Sekiu Post Office before. I was only at the Reef for less than an hour. The radio played an oldies station due to the signal for the Canadian Public Broadcast station not having a strong enough signal out here to stay on the frequency. I listened to Steely Dan, Motown and when it got to Burton Cummings, I switched it around a bit and came up with Rich Terfry, who has taken over from Jurgen Goth on Disk Drive, the commuters program, which was always a delight in the late afternoon. Terfry is ok but Goth was a legend. He came up with a quirky Sunday afternoon segment for a while in late 2009 and then he disappeared entirely. He seemed a bit petulant, making comments that 'hope this is quirky enough for you', meaning that, I thought, his take on broadcasting didn't meet with the producers' vision and so they let him go. He might have also just gotten too old for the radio biz and needed his retirement but I don't think so. The 'quirky' music he played in the last shows he did was just as alive, vibrant, interesting and engaging as it had always been and I wouldn't be amiss in saying that Goth's shows did give the pathway that the station follows now as he wasn't just a classical music buff, although his Samuel Barber offerings were introduced with a kind of reverence I haven't heard anyone else pull off quite as well. There's a guy on in the mornings now who sounds like my lawyer pal, Bucky Cotton. His name is Bob Mackowitz and he gives the best of the Canadian folky types a good play and it's good music, though nothing in the league of Goth but still refreshing and one would like to skip through the kitchen while the pancakes simmer on the griddle.
I couldn't get the fire going at the Reef but I tried. There wasn't enough paper around to get the kindling going so we may go down later when Gabe wakes up and have a go at it again. The dogs are still out in the garage waiting for little Gabe, the neighbor boy, to come to. He's propped up on the couch under downy fleece blankets with Christmas motifs, still wearing his outside coat over his pajamas, silent as the tomb. I've made breakfast for him: a little warm apple pie and biscuits with gravy. He ate like a logger at lunch yesterday: turkey and gravy over Poulsbo bread. I think I'll turn on the television and we'll watch a little tv while we eat. See how long he sleeps.
The buzzer on the dryer just went off. There was a load in the washing machine I hadn't realized was in there when I went to load it. The new load was mostly sneakers and dirty boots so those were set behind the woodstove to dry out and I just ran the forgotten load. Better go switch loads now, see if things are thoroughly dry and ready to be folded.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Tuesday, January 5, 2010
first reference to the Reef as 'the Reef'
my thoughts are swirling about, as they always do when I first get up in the morning. I meant to get back to this Sunday sometime but gave myself ample excuses why I shouldn't...my neighbor invited me for spaghetti...what else? It took several hours to light the fire at the Reef (yesterday's fire was delightful and warm)..sometimes I don't stay long enough there to appreciate the warmth but I always make the effort because it's the only source of heat (not actually true, I have several space heaters but I chose not to use them). I did paint again. Saturday I'd gotten some lush (seems like a misspell, that word, but I'll go with it) pink, a white lacquer, several other colors, not doing any Jasper Johns at the moment, red white and blue, but I might get to it since I've got flags about the house and what other source of flag would we have but the ewess of ai..that's not to be a sarcasm, I don't have any regrets or misinformation about my political stance anymore, other than to say I 'once shook the Cuban Ambassador's hand' hehe...well I did...an ancient story at this point but it was in the time of the cultivation of American University students and the reeducation of art as the influence to world peace, which I think was a good effort and once that gives me the idea that it is time to have a place like the Reef...
there's always been a place like the reef...for a little while there was only the woodpile at the back of my parents' house but I was in the middle of relationships and the longterm had become the blender (spun up into a drizzling puddle), who can paint then?
one of the more delightful reefs was on 18th street, back East as I like to say, and while I reminesce about it, I think that the art created there (the Housewife's Middle being my very favorite) came about just as it does here, a sort of magic combines before your very eyes while you stand there peeling the wet canvas from the wall and trying to stretch it out a bit...the Middle piece was done on a damask table cloth and came out a hue of red and blue (aaaahhh....Johns...) that was like a Madras but softer and it pouched towards the middle of the frame like a flabby stomach but in a loving way. It was stretched after it was painted, my husband 'P' did the framing, him of the Corcoran School...it was lovely from the start and I don't know who has it but I know I sold it as in those days I didn't keep much but him and our children.
Now it's the opposite, I keep everything (that's going to change here shortly because I think daily about moving to the Reef) and my children are grown. At times I'm a foster parent but now I only have a little day charge, Gabe, whose mother did a runner and my neighbor, his gramma, has taken charge of things. This little spectacle has dragged me down like a stone but I'm floating on the top of it, like something you'd throw in the bathtub to scrub with and I think that's why the Pollack inspired series is my present effort. No structure, colors little momma mixed, colors I started out with that she got into, I packed her clothes up yesterday, she was going to live at the Reef with my little charge. It's insulation, talking about it now.
I can't say that being a painter, among the varied careers of my life, hasn't been like that always. It has. There's always high drama and you wonder about the relevancy, or why it works out that way. A couple years ago I had a couple doing meth next door. It was amazing. One day the sheriff was parked across the street, where our preschool is housed (good God). There was tape across the fencing of the house. It fluttered in the breeze. Finally I asked, "What's going on?"
The Sheriff told me. "Hmmm..." I said. So I looked for signs and I found plenty. The refitting of the family van every first of the month when he had cooked his batch. His absence for several weeks after that. Coming home to his wife and screeching and banging. Her as twitchy as the cat in idle conversation. We both did needlework and crocheted. Our children had been raised together, overnights, school activities, some of the same grades. She retired as the bank manager. The bank subsequently closed. It didn't happen overnight. For years we were all substantial family elements.
It's quiet over there now. Fit and Refit are gone and the owners are back in residence. They might as well live in outerspace for all I see of them. Well, that's not true entirely. When I worked 'up on the Hill' as we call the state pen, 'he'...the husband, just sorted of popped into place wearing camo which I thought was not allowed on site, as I walked into the main building from the warehouse. He was just under the tower at the gate and he only needed a rifle. Cuban ambassador huh, hehe...hmm. I hadn't noticed he was there but there he was and the camo fatigues were really out of place. I had got chastized for wearing a camo neck scarf and I had no idea it was disallowed. It was really disallowed.
So I'm thinking once the little momma stuff is out of the reef...there's some rather nice dishware and cookware to be boxed, then I've got to put some of my overflow in there and maybe hmm...take some of my overflow to the quarter store? That could be the place for it. There's really too much of it. It's been taking me some time getting past what little momma did but as I say, tragedy is always there and tomorrow I see a centering helper about steering over the Rowandan-sized bumps in the road. He was cautioning me, the centerist, that it does seem to interface with one's religious beliefs but I told him that being a Catholic is the starting point for me, not the authority on faith, although it seems to provide to me the toolbox AND the materials for my faith. I can't make other people, like the meth-cooking neighbors and the little mother in the woods, live their lives the way I have been used to seeing them live their lives: peace, joy, harmony, status quo...but whatever I tried to do to keep them from sliding into the ...into the what? well, mrs meth died...nah, I'm not a failure at saving people but standing at the edge with them is frightening and teh constancy of painting is consistent with the knowledge that there are other ways to get around the Rowandan bumps in the road. Like having a religious faith. Not that you have to advertise and encourage it in others. You just have to live it. but whoa, I really was down about little momma...really
During the housewife's middle studio days I saw my husband kissing someone else during a get together at the house. We lived on the second floor of the building and our studio was on the top floor. I had to admit that I liked my freedom. He'd given me the open window and encouraged me to fly out like a bird by doing that but instead we got married and had a baby. We aren't married anymore and I don't feel that I would like to be married to him. His father died recently so we talked a few times about that. Our daughter doesn't want him at her wedding next May. My brother's wife calls him 'the deadbeat dad' but that's just a term for someone who still paints, like me, and rails at the world about your politicians and assorted scumbags that create havoc with our lives (oh I did think Saddam Hussein might have been one of those, come to think of it) but anyway...I guess I'm spilling these beans as a reference to falling in love with Raven and wondernig where that'll go... It's been five years now, I realize, and for all intents and purposes, that's my life, but Raven isn't anywhere you'd be able to see him pop up...out on the boat a lot...dropping in for twenty minutes while I'm building a fire at the Reef...never gone anywhere with him, like dinner or Hawaii...tsskkkk...art and painting is like that...not a normal life, but plenty of bliss in it, and delightful children (they just keep coming...you should see the one and only granddaughter,, arrrghhh...)
Well, at that rate it's time to get out the waffle iron and attempt coconut waffles, not Julia child here but I make stuff up pretty regular...
about two cups of white flour (you can sift it or you cannot but it is lighter if you do)
a teaspoon of baking powder
third cup salad oil
dash of salt
l/2 teaspoon cinnamon
flaking coconut sprinkled over the batter to taste (about 3/4 cup if you like it crunchy)
powdered milk, l/4-l/3 cup
enough water to make the batter like thick cake batter
one big egg, separated, yolk into batter, whip the white and fold in
heat up waffle iron until it sizzles, pour on batter and cook until golden brown...delicious
going to go make some now...by the way I got another honorable mention this year for my Christmas cookies in the bakeofff...it was in the local paper and the ribbon is hanging in the beader car, ok, puff puff brag brag...have to get some boxes for little momma's dishes...urggg...it's nearly 6 am...her spawn will be here in another hour and a half and we'll tear through the day as I chew my upper lip where a cold sore scab is looking gnarly at me in the mirror...
oh...post note...great ripping fire in our little area last night...might have to go see it in the light, glad we didn't find it last night looking for it, me and my little charge...his gram is on the fire crew of course...burned the place to the ground and it was an eyesore so is that really a loss...she came looking for him last night but I'd gotten him over to his gramps after we got back from not finding the fire...she said it was still going, one never wants to see total destruction either in buildings or people but there it is...varrooommm!! challenge is to put it together and keep it together...and PAINT!!
there's always been a place like the reef...for a little while there was only the woodpile at the back of my parents' house but I was in the middle of relationships and the longterm had become the blender (spun up into a drizzling puddle), who can paint then?
one of the more delightful reefs was on 18th street, back East as I like to say, and while I reminesce about it, I think that the art created there (the Housewife's Middle being my very favorite) came about just as it does here, a sort of magic combines before your very eyes while you stand there peeling the wet canvas from the wall and trying to stretch it out a bit...the Middle piece was done on a damask table cloth and came out a hue of red and blue (aaaahhh....Johns...) that was like a Madras but softer and it pouched towards the middle of the frame like a flabby stomach but in a loving way. It was stretched after it was painted, my husband 'P' did the framing, him of the Corcoran School...it was lovely from the start and I don't know who has it but I know I sold it as in those days I didn't keep much but him and our children.
Now it's the opposite, I keep everything (that's going to change here shortly because I think daily about moving to the Reef) and my children are grown. At times I'm a foster parent but now I only have a little day charge, Gabe, whose mother did a runner and my neighbor, his gramma, has taken charge of things. This little spectacle has dragged me down like a stone but I'm floating on the top of it, like something you'd throw in the bathtub to scrub with and I think that's why the Pollack inspired series is my present effort. No structure, colors little momma mixed, colors I started out with that she got into, I packed her clothes up yesterday, she was going to live at the Reef with my little charge. It's insulation, talking about it now.
I can't say that being a painter, among the varied careers of my life, hasn't been like that always. It has. There's always high drama and you wonder about the relevancy, or why it works out that way. A couple years ago I had a couple doing meth next door. It was amazing. One day the sheriff was parked across the street, where our preschool is housed (good God). There was tape across the fencing of the house. It fluttered in the breeze. Finally I asked, "What's going on?"
The Sheriff told me. "Hmmm..." I said. So I looked for signs and I found plenty. The refitting of the family van every first of the month when he had cooked his batch. His absence for several weeks after that. Coming home to his wife and screeching and banging. Her as twitchy as the cat in idle conversation. We both did needlework and crocheted. Our children had been raised together, overnights, school activities, some of the same grades. She retired as the bank manager. The bank subsequently closed. It didn't happen overnight. For years we were all substantial family elements.
It's quiet over there now. Fit and Refit are gone and the owners are back in residence. They might as well live in outerspace for all I see of them. Well, that's not true entirely. When I worked 'up on the Hill' as we call the state pen, 'he'...the husband, just sorted of popped into place wearing camo which I thought was not allowed on site, as I walked into the main building from the warehouse. He was just under the tower at the gate and he only needed a rifle. Cuban ambassador huh, hehe...hmm. I hadn't noticed he was there but there he was and the camo fatigues were really out of place. I had got chastized for wearing a camo neck scarf and I had no idea it was disallowed. It was really disallowed.
So I'm thinking once the little momma stuff is out of the reef...there's some rather nice dishware and cookware to be boxed, then I've got to put some of my overflow in there and maybe hmm...take some of my overflow to the quarter store? That could be the place for it. There's really too much of it. It's been taking me some time getting past what little momma did but as I say, tragedy is always there and tomorrow I see a centering helper about steering over the Rowandan-sized bumps in the road. He was cautioning me, the centerist, that it does seem to interface with one's religious beliefs but I told him that being a Catholic is the starting point for me, not the authority on faith, although it seems to provide to me the toolbox AND the materials for my faith. I can't make other people, like the meth-cooking neighbors and the little mother in the woods, live their lives the way I have been used to seeing them live their lives: peace, joy, harmony, status quo...but whatever I tried to do to keep them from sliding into the ...into the what? well, mrs meth died...nah, I'm not a failure at saving people but standing at the edge with them is frightening and teh constancy of painting is consistent with the knowledge that there are other ways to get around the Rowandan bumps in the road. Like having a religious faith. Not that you have to advertise and encourage it in others. You just have to live it. but whoa, I really was down about little momma...really
During the housewife's middle studio days I saw my husband kissing someone else during a get together at the house. We lived on the second floor of the building and our studio was on the top floor. I had to admit that I liked my freedom. He'd given me the open window and encouraged me to fly out like a bird by doing that but instead we got married and had a baby. We aren't married anymore and I don't feel that I would like to be married to him. His father died recently so we talked a few times about that. Our daughter doesn't want him at her wedding next May. My brother's wife calls him 'the deadbeat dad' but that's just a term for someone who still paints, like me, and rails at the world about your politicians and assorted scumbags that create havoc with our lives (oh I did think Saddam Hussein might have been one of those, come to think of it) but anyway...I guess I'm spilling these beans as a reference to falling in love with Raven and wondernig where that'll go... It's been five years now, I realize, and for all intents and purposes, that's my life, but Raven isn't anywhere you'd be able to see him pop up...out on the boat a lot...dropping in for twenty minutes while I'm building a fire at the Reef...never gone anywhere with him, like dinner or Hawaii...tsskkkk...art and painting is like that...not a normal life, but plenty of bliss in it, and delightful children (they just keep coming...you should see the one and only granddaughter,, arrrghhh...)
Well, at that rate it's time to get out the waffle iron and attempt coconut waffles, not Julia child here but I make stuff up pretty regular...
about two cups of white flour (you can sift it or you cannot but it is lighter if you do)
a teaspoon of baking powder
third cup salad oil
dash of salt
l/2 teaspoon cinnamon
flaking coconut sprinkled over the batter to taste (about 3/4 cup if you like it crunchy)
powdered milk, l/4-l/3 cup
enough water to make the batter like thick cake batter
one big egg, separated, yolk into batter, whip the white and fold in
heat up waffle iron until it sizzles, pour on batter and cook until golden brown...delicious
going to go make some now...by the way I got another honorable mention this year for my Christmas cookies in the bakeofff...it was in the local paper and the ribbon is hanging in the beader car, ok, puff puff brag brag...have to get some boxes for little momma's dishes...urggg...it's nearly 6 am...her spawn will be here in another hour and a half and we'll tear through the day as I chew my upper lip where a cold sore scab is looking gnarly at me in the mirror...
oh...post note...great ripping fire in our little area last night...might have to go see it in the light, glad we didn't find it last night looking for it, me and my little charge...his gram is on the fire crew of course...burned the place to the ground and it was an eyesore so is that really a loss...she came looking for him last night but I'd gotten him over to his gramps after we got back from not finding the fire...she said it was still going, one never wants to see total destruction either in buildings or people but there it is...varrooommm!! challenge is to put it together and keep it together...and PAINT!!
Sunday, January 3, 2010
January 3, 2010
another in a series of very grim weather, the dog scratching at the garage door to be let in, having just watched yesterday the movie, Avatar, I went early this morning to the Reef to commit to paint my impression of the story. Very grandiose presentation, we could have done without the commercial exploitation theme but it is very prevalent here where the Reef is situated and one might think even causal to its restoration, if that's what I'm doing there. But I don't see that I've ripped out the family tree where the village was, rather that I carefully handcut all the briars and transported them, also by hand to the truck, off to the woods where they might grow again, the wild rose and the black berry mainly.
On the radio at the Reef played the latin masses of some fellow writing music at the time Leonardo was dreaming of his flying machine. I watched the fire and stoked it with the raw cedar I've been scavenging. It gradually warmed a bit and I hung some damp laundry out to dry while I painted.
Now it is time for Mass which begins in twenty minutes and I have to quickly dress up a bit so that I'll be presentable.
Probably I will come back to this later, check emails and probably send off long overdue greetings to friends around the country.
My painting muse is still Jackson and this morning it was a bit of Frost, whose poetry I am unfamiliar with, other than to know he was from New England. It just seems as though his poetry speaks about the kind of winter we are in and why it is important to keep a warm hearth wherever you are.
On the radio at the Reef played the latin masses of some fellow writing music at the time Leonardo was dreaming of his flying machine. I watched the fire and stoked it with the raw cedar I've been scavenging. It gradually warmed a bit and I hung some damp laundry out to dry while I painted.
Now it is time for Mass which begins in twenty minutes and I have to quickly dress up a bit so that I'll be presentable.
Probably I will come back to this later, check emails and probably send off long overdue greetings to friends around the country.
My painting muse is still Jackson and this morning it was a bit of Frost, whose poetry I am unfamiliar with, other than to know he was from New England. It just seems as though his poetry speaks about the kind of winter we are in and why it is important to keep a warm hearth wherever you are.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)