White Christmas

20 December 2009

Madness infuses the everyday

rituals that help our home get through

the holidays, but now and then we manage

contentment--as near perfection

as we’ll ever get--as near the wishes,

hopes and dreams we’ve feared

we’d never realize as we can hope to come.

I am given to analysis,

though I could never manage to encapsulate

what makes these moments happen,

what gives me eyes to see this

brief window into Paradise. I’ll quit now,

while I’m ahead and my vision’s clear,

the children are here and ours

for a white Christmas.

Letter

29 October 2009

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

photo courtesy of Pink Sherbet

Correspondence is a lost art--

not the type it in and click send sort.

The kind that exacts a price

in ink, paper, postage, and hands sore

from gripping a well made pen.

Most everything is faster now than it was

when I was a kid. Back then, everything was

faster than it had been before.

I wonder at what point we’ll lose

our equilibrium; revert of necessity

to a less dizzying pace. Maybe then we’ll sit

down of our own accord on a summer evening

with a glass of actual fresh-squeezed lemonade;

write a letter to someone who remembers

less hectic times than we do.

Lucky

29 October 2009

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

for MJ & the Brats

photo courtesy of Rich Bowen

He could find a four leaf clover anywhere,

and he always did--even 14 years later in my yard,

a relative stranger now. He bent toward the ground,

worked his magic once more, and I remembered

luck was a luxury--we were more like dandelions

blown across the globe wherever the Forces willed.

We flew with the wind and landed,

hoping this plot of land would be

as or more kindly than the last.

Sting

29 October 2009

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/furryscalyman/

I think I might welcome a wasp or two--

they’re a sure sign summer has long yet to surrender--

standing at the bus stop on a chilly fall twilight.

If not for the knowledge that Winter is on his way,

the morning would be relatively unmarred.

The air isn’t cold enough to sting; to rob me

of the paintbrush trees and the flaming bushes...

yet.

Flag

29 October 2009

inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

photo courtesy of Moab Girl

I prefer a quilt to a flag--there’s room

for mixed loyalties, preference more complex

than blood and honor, courage and fifty-one stars.

Ambivalence wreaks havoc on those lines--

the unrelenting contrast a written-in-red-and-white-

stone patriotism which makes it difficult to think

beyond black and white.

The quilt was made by my mother. I watched her

stitch the pieces together on a military base

on foreign soil, where soldiers had died.

So did we all, for the sake of a mission,

nevermind the casualties at home.

Line

29 October 2009

photo by dr.ppr

There’s a line, a point of indecision

beyond which it will cost dearly to go back,
lose weight, make right, arrive
at the intended destination. Too Late
is a myth, but one always hopes to turn
before interpreting the point of indecision
as the point of no return.

Protest

29 October 2009

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith

photo courtesy of http://www.flickr.com/photos/ghoulmann/

I had traded my picket sign

for a picket fence, but injustice doesn’t disappear

because I am safe. There are battles to be fought,

and I, being the soldier, cannot sit idle;

let this or that chauvinist think it’s ok for him

to leave the chivalry to you.

Scamming

Someone tried to scam me through my Etsy shop today. I was uncomfortable from the first email, but couldn't figure out what the scam was. Here's the email:

I asked several times to what location I would be shipping my painting (MY PAINTING), and she responded each time that her "private shipping company" would pick it up. She said she would send an excess of funds so that I could pay the shipping company via Western Union.

I have to admit I'm a bit crestfallen. I do desire to sell my paintings. But it scares me to think that if these folks had been just a bit more sophisticated in their approach, I'd have lost a very meaningful painting, and I'd be more than $1000 in the hole.

Without Fear

17 October 2009

My eyes are open today. I see

how fruitless are the hours spent worrying

about a form and substance you adore.

These conversations never cease behind the eyes,

laughing or weeping. They never cease.

I hear the fretting accusations,

the whispers of starvation. I hear them,

but they grow quieter with time. Or perhaps

I build a wall inside my head, beyond which

their power diminishes--

I am, without fear, who I am.

Someone Else's

8 October 2009

No one decided to titivate our walk

to the bus stop with a two-days-gone raccoon

and broken fluorescents. Nevertheless,

the flattening lump in the road

gave me a shiver-- unnecessary in today’s

decidedly crisper autumn chill.

Carelessness, really, perhaps a neglected brake-check,

lack of attention to detail on trash day,

and our daily trek was muddied with the detritus

of someone else’s poor judgement.

We did not choose to put the raccoon in the street,

nor the glass in the grass at the bus stop--

neither had we chosen to remove them.

Chastened, we took up the less offensive burden; hoped

someone else would own up to the raccoon.

Whisper

7 October 2009

There’s a perfect arc of moistened concrete

beneath the storm door today, another autumnal whisper,

“summer is gone,” I’d not heard until this morning.

From now until May, possibly June,

the air on the world-side of that door will be cooler

than the air on the home-side.

The latter will rarely be warm enough, and the former

will only shed its moisture down the door for so long

before North Wind weaves of the water

her crystalline lacework over the glass;

hides the frosted grass from view.

Blank

6 October 2009

I picked four canvases,

though quantity has never been an object--

I always fill the empty spaces. I didn’t realize

there were two such, untouched, against a wall

at home, hiding behind neglected work

like the words I’ve tried to write of late.

I’ve waited too long, spoken too little--

there’s a perfect whiteness cluttering my mind.

I can’t find the component shards of possibility

until I’ve brought a new one home.

Reticent

It's a word that well describes my sentiment as I sit down with my laptop to take up the task of writing again. I haven't written a single poem since mid-August, and before that it was mid-July. It's been so long since I've attempted to write everyday. There was a time when I couldn't help myself, and I lost sleep because there was so much to say.

I know there are at least as many beautiful things around me now as there were 3 years ago, when I wrote nearly constantly, sometimes driving down the road (usually I pulled over). Something about being, by and large, content seems to dull the edge of urgency--it's easier to put off sharing my mind when desperation is not licking at my heels.

I find, though, that when I don't write, over time, the things I would've said in the span of days or weeks back up in my mind, and I come to the point where there's too much to say and not enough words, or drafting-board space in my mind, to organize it and say it well.

This brings me to my word for the day: Reticent. I want to write. I want to share what I have to say, but I have no idea where to begin. So I'll begin with today. And maybe tomorrow will be easier.

reticent

5 October 2009

This season is fraught with dangers,

cliches I must attempt to navigate

over, around, beneath to find something

more meaningful than turning leaves,

pumpkins and hot, mulled wine.

I despair of avoiding the trip-up

and turn my face upward, breathe

the full, crisp air, wonder at the perfect

cut-outs against an o-dark-thirty sky

as I walk beneath a maple

reticent to change her green.

Beauty of Ashes

I've made some updates to my CafePress site--mostly organizational issues in the Everyday Art section. But I think it looks good.

http://www.cafepress.com/beautyofashes/6629306

Song Lyrics

I'm not a huge fan of the Christian music industry. A lot of the music played on Christian stations strikes me as insipid or manipulative jargon aimed at winning people into the Kingdom, or keeping them there, by means of an emotional high or, worse, an emotional low, when being faithful really has very little to do with how we feel. (Just as an aside, I know a lot of people who enjoy Christian music as a genre. I can completely respect that. I just don't tend to enjoy it myself.)

There have been songs over the years, though, that immediately struck a deep, deep chord of truth in me, despite my very strong bias against the genre. They may or may not have appealed to my emotions as they proclaimed, loud and clear, a truth which was not only valid, but vital. The lyrics below come from a song by a band called Tree 63. And perhaps the reason it strikes so profoundly every time I hear it is that they didn't try to say anything new or bend the Message to be "relevant". The song is scriptural, almost straight from the Psalms, and it acknowledges joy and grief, while praising all the while the God who works in all circumstances.

I heard it in the car on my way home from having a cup of coffee with friends after celebrating a liturgy with them this morning. I haven't heard this song since the Divorce Years, and while the trials in my life have morphed and eased dramatically since that time, it still brought tears to my eyes. Blessed be the name of the Lord--when I'm celebrating triumphs and redemption, or when I'm struggling with the results of my sin--blessed be the name of the Lord.

Blessed Be Your Name--by Tree 63

Blessed be Your name
In the land that is plentiful
Where Your streams of abundance flow
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
When I'm found in the desert place
Though I walk through the wilderness
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out,
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

Blessed be Your name
When the sun's shining down on me
When the world's all as it should be
Blessed be Your name

Blessed be Your name
On the road marked with suffering
Though there's pain in the offering
Blessed be Your name

Every blessing You pour out,
I'll turn back to praise
When the darkness closes in, Lord
Still I will say...
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your name
Blessed be the name of the Lord
Blessed be Your glorious name

You give and take away
You give and take away
My heart will choose to say
Lord, Blessed be your name

Untitled Pastel

Playing with pastels. I like this medium, though I certainly have not mastered it. May never. But it's fun, and it makes for beautiful shading.

Apple & Brand Loyalty

I am not a tech-savvy individual. I'm very good with programs like iCal, Pages, Mail, Numbers, Keynote, etc, but I have to call Apple when my computer starts doing glitchy things like shutting down iCal for no apparent reason, or when the notifications don't work anymore, again, for no apparent reason. I simply do not have the know-how to figure these things out on my own, or the interest to find the solutions myself online.

I am, however, deeply, irrevocably in love with my MacBook, and with all its peripheral products that make my life easier *everyday*. Most of all, I have realized today, I am completely head-over-heals in love with Apple's customer service. They're truly amazing, and they make me realize that it doesn't so much matter (primarily) what a company does--it matters first and foremost how they market their product, and how they treat their customers when problems arise. And when it comes to my Mac, Apple makes me want it. What's more, they make me enjoy it, even when there are problems, and they make me look forward to the day when I can step up to that sexy, 13" aluminum bodied MacBook (those of you who know my husband can hear his influence in that statement...). I've never been one to develop brand loyalties, but Apple has me firmly by the heart, and I'm quite happy in my predicament.

A new painting, started today. I was working on Caelum/Upturned Reservoir when the idea came to me. It is also not finished. I have a very definite idea of where I want this one to go. I said that about Upturned Reservoir as well. I guess that's what comes of not painting all summer.

Upturned Reservoir

Originally titled Caelum, this painting has taken an unexpected turn. It's not done yet (are they ever?), but I'm eager to get it to the point where it is. I'm really enjoying it, and the concept and the image are firmly sketched on my brain right now.

Meeting Margie

22 July 2009

Her name on his lips brings a smile

and memories, laughter. She still lives

because he remembers her. I come to know

the woman she was through stories told

around the table and the view

through the window overlooking

a field where the milking barn used to be

before she died, before the farm was rented out,

before they sold the cows, and the silo for scrap,

when the boy who would grow to be my husband

called this place home, milked cows, played

and worked in the hay barn and caught fireflies

under her swath of New Jersey sky.

Cobbler

5 July 2009

Bernice Imogene Pope

Now and again I get back

a part of myself. A cobbler brings me

face to face with my grandmother

and the dewberry bushes that grew

at the back fence in Victoria, south Texas

when I was younger than my little ones.

She picked them thinking of me--

no one loved those berries quite as much as I--

and she pummeled them through

a v-shaped colander so only the sweet

juice was covered by a rich cobbler crust.

The pan is two feet across,

the crust golden, the berries

sweeter than they’ve ever been since

in my memory.

Making Salteñas

1 July 2009

There's something real about working

flour with naked hands--

more sensitive than any pastry knife, my fingers

blend more naturally than stainless steel.

Water and flour become cool,

pliant dough against my skin.

Given my mother's unused kitchen,

we could have mixed the dough in half the time,

reduced the strengthening on our forearms,

the time spent learning where my sister-in-law

learned to make salteñas and empanadas.

We laid a foundation

and I asked where the napkins were kept:

"En la puerta."

"...the door? In the door? Oh, the Pantry!"

"Si! En la puerta."

...

"...Where? ...um... Donde?"

"Abajo."

"Abajo?"

"A-BA-jo..." A slight nod toward the floor

"OH! Abajo!"

She opened la puerta to the language of her heart,

and all because we took the long way around.

Damascus

12 June 2009

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith.

Light comes through the slats,

sometimes subtle, sometimes

keen--then the shutters cut like Damascus

steel through butter. The light

comes regardless of pallor or intensity--

a dozen curtains couldn’t block the cumulative

kinetic energy of the sun’s arms winding through

space, bouncing off the moon and the atmosphere,

making their way to my window, melting

into a bright and beautiful pool at my feet.

The Straw Man

12 June 2009

Inspired by The Weekend Wordsmith.

I still forget sometimes

especially when the Straw Man comes,

sets flame to all the arguments

I learned to keep me sane back then.

I must remember these arguments

do not serve except to train my mind

in another vein, prepare me to receive

another Truth, higher than any

proposition he could offer

that would have had me running ‘round

in circular arguments I couldn’t win,

even to save myself from the flames.

Sketching

Fiddling around with colored pencils. Not my best work, but I'm really stuck on the image.

Long Morning

27 May 2009

These children tell me every way but straight

what hurts and why. While well equipped for this

interpretive work, I tire easily; let down

my guard and them in the process; speak

words I can't take back no matter how I try.

No one told me I could not say, "Here"

and "This is so"; tie the loose ends off neatly,

uncomplicated by the circumstances we've created,

the hurts we cannot undo.

Same Site, New Look

I think most people these days read blogs through aggregators such as Bloglines and wouldn't notice the change, but being an artist, it bugs me to have my websites looking drab, or getting too familiar. So I've made some changes. The title has changed, but only for the sake of the look of the site. It's still the same old PracticingSanity.com.

I hope to have some new paintings to post soon. Maybe I should spend more time on that than on redesigning my website, eh?

Loves Me Not

New painting, just started. More images as it progresses.

It brings to mind loves-me-loves-me-not. That is actually the inspiration for the painting. There are vital nuances--in particular, it's not a picture of romantic love. That seems an important interpretive key to add, given the title of the painting.

As always, it's not yet finished. I think 50% of my paintings are Not Yet Finished. Maybe I'll create a new genre.

Reveille

13 May 2009

Inspired by the Weekend Wordsmith

He put on his uniform

just to get us out of bed,

That's how it seemed to me

as I shielded my eyes from the almost-

eye-level ceiling light--

the top bunk was always mine.

Come morning, Dad never failed,

clad in army green from tip to booted toe,

to wake us with a start, bleary eyed,

wanting just one morning without Reveille.

untitled

5 May 2009

Now and again I revisit

the anger, see if I can still feel

the grinding implications in my bones,

the grit between my teeth scraping,

wearing away flesh and blood. Resentment remains,

though on the periphery and fading fast.

I learn what it means to die to self

for the sake of Others who pushed me

to the point of chewing bitter, sandy cud

as I contemplate forgiveness; redemption.

The Gift of Giving

Today a surprise came in the mail for me, and I really, really love it. I don't imagine anyone else cares, but I still want to share it, and give my husband a huge pat on the back for picking something for me that I'd have chosen for myself. He has a gift for giving. At least with me. I don't think he's ever gone wrong.

I am very fond of clothing that has something of an international air, and caftans are at the top of my list.

BAHA

I am *very* pleased to announce that my husband got his Bone Anchored Hearing Apparatus, a.k.a. BAHA, today. It's simply amazing to me the technology available to the general public, and today, to the hearing impaired in particular.

I drove us home from the hospital, because now that he has the BAHA, he can hear me when I sit on his left side. We conversed all the way home, which is something we've never been able to do unless he was driving. We passed two emergency vehicles on the way home, and he immediately knew (with his newly gained stereo-hearing) from which direction they were approaching.

I can't express how pleased I am for my husband, because while those small new experiences today are a big deal, they're only the beginning of a new level interaction for him. Maybe he'll never have to pretend again that he caught the whole conversation when we're in a room full of people and someone is talking to him from the left. Maybe he will no longer feel compelled to avoid situations where he won't be able to hear adequately. I'm so excited and pleased for him.

Class project

I'm going blog crazy this week, huh?

My son's class is doing a geography project involving butterflies. They made butterflies out of tissue paper, hung them up around the classroom, and then left for spring break. When they came back *gasp* the butterflies had flown away. The idea was to have friends and family send postcards from around the country and the world telling the kids where their butterflies had been spotted.

My son has been bugging me to write a postcard to his class. He's totally on to the game, and wants me to participate. So I did, and here it is:

Silent Reverie

The aforementioned sketch:

Caelum

Toying with names for the painting when I should be going to bed. I have no idea whether it's finished. I had originally intended ONE of these to be an acrylic rendering of an old pencil sketch I'd entitled Silent Reverie. However, I like them both so much, I'm afraid to mess with them.

Aaaaand another...

This one's a bit of a teaser, as I've only included the corner of the canvas. Actually, i guess it's just a little less than half of the canvas. I started this painting and left the last as it is because I liked the latter so much, and was afraid to mess it up. I am now falling in love with this one was well. *Sigh*. One of them will have to serve as fodder for a more complex painting. Dunno which it will be yet. Maybe both.

And another...

I started all over today. New canvas, new idea. It still took all afternoon to finally get the idea by the tail, and it's not finished by a long shot. But it's a very nice start.

Painting

I started a painting yesterday, and soon came to the point I come to in every painting, when the painting isn't actually done, but I'm afraid to continue for fear of ruining it. Well, I pushed past that point. And I ruined it. But here's the documentation that a really cool, if somewhat bizarre painting existed until then.

nocturne

19 April 2009

I tried to take light from the Light
which Darkness cannot dim.
The darkness was complete enough
to hold a sinner in regret; hide my longing.
But the veiled and twinkling mystery
danced its way across watery vision,
nimbused by tears, grief
I cannot lay down while the darkness persists.
I need light to find the foot of the cross,
and the Savior.

On the lighter side...

I saw this on FailBlog this evening, and while I can't believe this is real, I got a very big kick out of it. I'm still laughing. You have to watch it all the way to the end. The whole thing is hilarious.

New Store

Today I opened a store on CafePress, were you can purchase prints of my paintings and sketches. There's a link in the sidebar above my image and profile link, or you can check it out here.

Progress

As usual, the painting is growing and changing, and becoming somethign I could not have forseen. I'm enjoying this one immensely, despite the subject matter. It's not yet finished.

Also, keep in mind that my husband presently has both our good cameras with him in Amsterdam. I'm very aware the quality of the image is severely lacking.

Back to painting...

Even for a woman of 33, with 2 kids, a fabulous husband, and a relatively stable, ridiculously happy and satisfying home life (it took long enough to get here); even having already weathered the storm of divorce in my own life, watching the marriage of one's progenitors dissolve is nothing less than harrowing.

I've had an image in my head for a while which expresses, for me, a portion of the chaos of it, and I started painting it today. I think for this one, I will dabble in mixed-media for the first time, because there are some things I simply cannot do in acrylics. We'll see how it turns out. Here's a peak at Stage 1. I apologize in advance for the quality of the photo. My husband is out of the country, and he accidentally left with our good point-and-shoot digital AND the digital SLR. So I have to work with what I have.

ends, means, in betweens

12 March 2009

There’s nothing wrong right here.
There’s just a nagging fear that this
really cannot be enough for us,
because it never was for him, for her,
for so many of their kind who never grew
any way but bitter and affronted,
then looked back and colored life dissatisfying--
one drab, unflattering color,
and justified their destinations in the end
by the miseries they endured, the pains
in between which forced them to choose.

The dreadful intimacy of divorce

I am reminded often of how foreign the feelings which accompany divorce are to those who have not experienced it. Actually, I realize now and again that there are folks for whom those feelings are foreign in spite of the fact that they themselves have been through a divorce.

So a relatively new acquaintance learns that I don't have my children with me today, and the conversation very naturally, though very uncomfortably for me, veers to the fact that they are each with their respective Other Parent. And my family is evinced as blended, and my heart as broken, though I'm never quite sure if the person with whom I'm talking understands the depth of the wound.

Or someone who has known and been close with both me and my ex, either in the past or currently, admits curiosity about our circumstance. And the conversation ends up in the vein of asking about our time-sharing agreement, and what the person perceives as the pros and cons of it, or asking me what pros and cons I experience.

It's not offensive to me to talk about--it's my life and it's dreadfully intimate, but it's bound to come up. I carry it with me everywhere I go, whether by the conspicuous absence of my children, or by the fact that my daughter addresses me by my first name, and my son addresses my husband as Baba. But it hurts. My, how it hurts. And no, I don't consider my children's Other Parents to be built in baby-sitters. It's not a newlywed perk that my husband and I are without our kids every other weekend.

And it will never be over. This is reality not just for the foreseeable future, but forever. My children will always have two homes, and I will always be obliged to split their time with folks who are, at least at this point, relative strangers, and worse yet, people who hurt me, and whom I hurt, by the very fact of our respective existential realities.

I heard someone recently say that if they had to choose between the death of a parent and that parent walking out on their other parent, they would choose the walking out. That statement provoked profound ambivalence in me. Ten years ago, I might've said the same, but now it strikes me as short-sited. Granted, the person who said it had lost a parent--one he loved and missed dearly. I honestly don't know which I'd prefer. Death is final. Divorce is an ongoing wound, with ongoing perpetrators. Death is closure, and leaves room to grieve for the person we knewso well, for good or ill. Divorce leaves us wondering who they are, whether the years we spent with them were really a lie, and whether there was something we could have done differently--or better. Divorce is never truly over, and given my demonstrable need for closure, I tend to think I'd prefer to deal with something cut and dry, something honest that Time might could help to heal.

affronted

5 March 2009

These affronts, at least, are mine,
somewhere half way between self- and other-
inflicted. Accepting culpability
doesn't close the wound, though
perhaps someday my bearing
of this burden will make lighter
for my children a cross they did not choose.

Blaming Barbie

I've spent a good many years blaming Barbie, Bratz and the like for most of the problems so many young girls (and grown women) seem to have with self-image. I just read an article posted by Ruth that shook the foundation of all those arguments, and made me take a long hard look at my growing up, and at my dinner conversation.

I can't say I hadn't thought about my tendency to blame culture, or about the importance of my own attitude toward my own body and my ideas about beauty in general. I also cannot say, however, that I had ever connect these concepts, and realized that while Barbie, Bratz, and all the images with which we and our daughters are inundated on a daily basis mean nothing next to the influence a mother and a father weild in the mind of a child. My comfort with my own body, and my husband's unconditional love for me, will speak volumes more to my daughter in the long run than a ridiculously proportioned doll.

That said, I'm still not a fan. Why Barbie could have been made with smaller breasts and a tiny bit larger waist, I'll never understand. Oh, and flat feet. Who wears heels everyday? Srsly.

moving target

26 February 2009

Time is a moving target in its banks--
like dunes I barely own before they shift,
take on a different shape, a different place.
They move into a different time, and I
no longer recognize the clouds or sky
above them, much less this landscape
the river never ceases to mold.

beautiful disaster

1 February 2009

Mom's sewing projects were disasters
of monumental proportions, but her wrecks
were always confined to the sewing machine cover,
strings of all hues, lengths and thicknesses
peeking out from among countless castoff swatches
of every imaginable color, shape and size.

The outcome of every venture was a masterpiece--
from Raggedy Anne to wedding dresses
that outlasted their respective marriages.

She had a gift, and she gave it to me.
I pull it out seldom, and with much effort
in the way of enthusiasm. I never nurtured the skill,
and I lack the talent of my forebears.

Just enough of my mother's grace exists
in my fingers to bless my own girl with a moment
like the moments of my childhood, to recreate
the beautiful disaster in some small way,
make the little girl I was a part of her.

dunes

28 January 2009

I trace the curve of my belly
too many times a day to count
with my eyes. I watch my skin
rise and fall in different places
than it used to, and I wonder
when these dunes will cease
to shift. My thoughts are prone

to solidify more swiftly
than the contours of my breasts--
from moment to moment,
I think, “this shape is It--
this is Me,” and the synapses fire

M-E.

Then the wind picks up,
and the dunes shift again.

the branch

28 January 2009

Wind whips the young, ice-glazed
branches of our slender sycamore sapling
out back, and I think hard at the tree,
“Hold on!” I suppose that one branch
is not so necessary in the larger scheme.
But that’s the branch upon which
my grandson will place his foot someday
to scale the limbs outside my window.
That branch will let my granddaughter
climb the tree a year or two sooner,
because the rule has always been
if you can reach it, you can climb it.

Untitled-- nude in acrylic

Nudity in art

I have received some criticism in the last year or so as my artwork begins to take a more sensual turn. I think there are a lot of people who tend to identify nudity in general, and portrayal of nudity in art in particular, as pornographic. I do not share this tendency, though the comments I've received re: my sculptures and a couple of my paintings tends to make me a little gunshy when it comes to sharing them. Nevertheless, my next post, tonight or sometime tomorrow morning, will fall under the classification of "fine art nude." Consider yourselves warned.

Newest painting

This one emerges out of some recent events--a little too personal to explain, but I think it's a cool painting anyway. I don't think it's quite finished. But it has a very fairy-ish, will-o'-the-wisp feeling to it.

computer woes

My computer completely stopped working three days ago. It won't boot at all. We bought a new hard drive, because we thought that might be the problem and I wanted more space anyway, but the hard drive is apparently not the only problem. So I'm sending it off to Apple tomorrow and hoping (against hope) to have it back by the end of the week.

I fully realized how dependent I was on my computer, and when I realized the hard drive hadn't fixed the problem, I was *extremely* discouraged. It's strange that the internet has become such a presence that it almost feels like something I *need* is missing. I know it's not a necessity, and I'm fully capable of going without, but the psychological strain its absence causes gives me pause--perhaps I should unplug more often.

stories

15 January 2009
Beloved

He thrives on stories,
epigram or epic--
hears them with relish,
tells them with an eye
toward making you believe
he was there,
saw it with his own eyes,
whether he actually did or not.
Who can tell? His joy is complete
in the sharing of experience
(his or someone else’s),
though he’d have you believe otherwise.
He is a lover of experiences,
but his addiction is reliving, retelling
an experience that never really dies