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| poem for her, March 2011 |
Wednesday, March 9, 2011
Tuesday, March 8, 2011
water signs
Oh, how the waning hours of February glide into the early days of March each year. I blinked and it became the 8th of March, just like that. And I, just as abruptly as one adjusts to writing a new year on calendars and checks come January one, am suddenly describing myself by a new pair of numbers. That's a three and a one. I am in it now: full-fledged thirties. And I feel it, and its good.
Last year I remember trying to get mentally ready for the transition from my late twenties to that foreboding number thirty, the first milestone birthday, checking in with myself to make sure I was in the right place, or at some crucial right juncture, or with a right path ahead to some apex, at least. I thought I had done well and packed my mental-preparedness gear, but come that fateful day I awoke in a grumpus and spent most of the day there. [Which is difficult to articulate because being a Leap Year Baby I don't actually have the benefit of a fateful day...at least not but one year in every four]. Yes, last year I spent the waking hours in a funky conundrum of ethereal questions like "where am I going?" and "what am I doing here?" and "how has all this time gone so fast?". And all this funk at the sea, no less.
But not this year. This year I was very hesitant and anxious about the fateful unspecific birth-day. And perhaps even more so because of the nature of not having a "day" to just sink into and get it over with. My birthday instead tends to trail on for a week and meld into others, like my mother's and brother's, both less than a week down the line towards the Ides of March. It is the tendency of water [signs] to flow, after all, and I am not opposed to the nature of my Pisces-ness. It seems perfectly fitting to gather in a school and go on swimming into the next set of numbers together.
Already my mother's are a six and a zero- huge milestone! My brother's a two and an eight. Along down the watery line of birthdays is my new dear friend Amy: two and five today, my old friend Ryan: three and one (just like me !), and both members of my step-family have already settled into theirs.
But I digress...
Yes this year my inadvertent week-long strand of birthday acknowledgment has been nothing short of perfect. It began with the beloved snow day (you know the one), then an impromptu night out at a 'Pisces party' (not my own, thus even more glorious), and proceeded with a treat of beer stout floats (yummm), a gifted massage (ahhhh) and a dream therapy session ( I love these any day), then trickled down to a little stream that flowed through the weekend all the way to my mother's house for celebration in family company, and into today where the well filled with one final hoorah in a sea-green jade lounge- couldn't be more perfect. And the sun was shining and it smelled like spring and we sat outside because we could.
This year my birthday fit to a 'T'. I have grown into myself over the past year and I know what I am doing here, and how the time has passed just appropriately long or short depending on perspective, and that where I am going upwards ahead is right and good, as far as I can see. Along this pearl string of birth-day(s) celebration I have commiserated, celebrated, cried, laughed, retreated, basked, discussed, pondered, and coddled a little epiphany. On the twenty-eighth of February, my first non-birthday day, I began writing my essays for Art Therapy school. And the link of events and people and days and weather patterns and travel and dreams has carried me like a river into the great warm pool of thirty one where I unwind with languor and pen in hand. I am grateful for the water signs.
Last year I remember trying to get mentally ready for the transition from my late twenties to that foreboding number thirty, the first milestone birthday, checking in with myself to make sure I was in the right place, or at some crucial right juncture, or with a right path ahead to some apex, at least. I thought I had done well and packed my mental-preparedness gear, but come that fateful day I awoke in a grumpus and spent most of the day there. [Which is difficult to articulate because being a Leap Year Baby I don't actually have the benefit of a fateful day...at least not but one year in every four]. Yes, last year I spent the waking hours in a funky conundrum of ethereal questions like "where am I going?" and "what am I doing here?" and "how has all this time gone so fast?". And all this funk at the sea, no less.
But not this year. This year I was very hesitant and anxious about the fateful unspecific birth-day. And perhaps even more so because of the nature of not having a "day" to just sink into and get it over with. My birthday instead tends to trail on for a week and meld into others, like my mother's and brother's, both less than a week down the line towards the Ides of March. It is the tendency of water [signs] to flow, after all, and I am not opposed to the nature of my Pisces-ness. It seems perfectly fitting to gather in a school and go on swimming into the next set of numbers together.
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| "fish, etc. be renewed", Work of Art XI |
But I digress...
Yes this year my inadvertent week-long strand of birthday acknowledgment has been nothing short of perfect. It began with the beloved snow day (you know the one), then an impromptu night out at a 'Pisces party' (not my own, thus even more glorious), and proceeded with a treat of beer stout floats (yummm), a gifted massage (ahhhh) and a dream therapy session ( I love these any day), then trickled down to a little stream that flowed through the weekend all the way to my mother's house for celebration in family company, and into today where the well filled with one final hoorah in a sea-green jade lounge- couldn't be more perfect. And the sun was shining and it smelled like spring and we sat outside because we could.
This year my birthday fit to a 'T'. I have grown into myself over the past year and I know what I am doing here, and how the time has passed just appropriately long or short depending on perspective, and that where I am going upwards ahead is right and good, as far as I can see. Along this pearl string of birth-day(s) celebration I have commiserated, celebrated, cried, laughed, retreated, basked, discussed, pondered, and coddled a little epiphany. On the twenty-eighth of February, my first non-birthday day, I began writing my essays for Art Therapy school. And the link of events and people and days and weather patterns and travel and dreams has carried me like a river into the great warm pool of thirty one where I unwind with languor and pen in hand. I am grateful for the water signs.
Thursday, February 24, 2011
Update (snow day part deux)
Two posts in one day?!? That's the glory of the snow day. The snow has long since melted, but the skies keep blowing juicy flakes, and even dumping bits of hail, for viewing from my window. What have I been accomplishing with all these gifted hours of freedom, you ask? "Why, gettin' stuff done" I say (in a southern drawl)! Check it out: among other menial tasks, I have updated my website, adding images of my newest work and my beloved office-job series 'Work' of Art that get me through the days...you know the ones.
I also had time enough to scan them in for sharing:
Inadvertent two-day work weeks are where its at. This feels great. And a glimpse of the day-to-day I aspire to live is enough to keep moving forward on the path.
(Hey Universe, care to make it a one-day week? I would be much obliged...)
I also had time enough to scan them in for sharing:
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| la sonata ( 'Work' of Art IX) |
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| somnambulance ( 'Work' of Art X) |
Inadvertent two-day work weeks are where its at. This feels great. And a glimpse of the day-to-day I aspire to live is enough to keep moving forward on the path.
(Hey Universe, care to make it a one-day week? I would be much obliged...)
snow day
Snow makes humans nostalgic. Even those individuals who have grown up in places that never get snow, delight at the prospect of a "white Christmas" knowing the off chance of getting their wish fulfilled is slim to none. Yesterday marked the third "threat" of snow for the calendar year of 2011, and truthfully, by the disappointing show from mother nature the first two times around, I was skeptical. Office ladies were milling about with their 'snow-calling' sweaters bedecked with snowflakes and snowmen, trying to will it to be. Classroom teachers scoffed "see you tomorrow", or "be careful in all that snow out there" as I hopped on my bike and rode off into the sunlit afternoon. But, perhaps if you tote enough 'will' on sweaters combined with enough skeptics who secretly want the snow as much as the adorned, mother nature will actually grant you a white-coated morning to bask in; the snow day.
Not much by normal standards, and nearly gone by the time I finished this post, but I'm enjoying it, and the nostalgia it stirs up for my beloved days in a one-room cabin in the woods of Fairbanks.
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| room left, "kitchen", 2009 |
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| room right, "living room", 2009 |
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| Fairbanks' snow day, 2008 |
Monday, February 14, 2011
Tuesday, February 8, 2011
'Dots & Broken Rules'
Well, here it is:
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| Dots & Broken Rules, 2011, mixed media on mounted panel |
The finished product for the 6th Annual Portland Love Show, delivered on Saturday with excitement and relief.
This marks the end of six months of production mode and the beginning of new discoveries, play time. I am like a sponge soaked with ideas and writing page after page after page...images, spaces (like Emerson Street's Space Case and Settlement Galleries downtown) and inspiring artists- new discoveries to me like Katherine Mann and old locals like those in the Intuition Show- are fueling me with ideas for projects that needed a little bit more clarity. I don't know where to begin, there is so much freedom now that I don't have to prioritize by deadlines.
I'll start by 'getting my social on' at Saturday's opening reception, potluck and cocktail style, meet and greet style at Gallery Homeland, on SE 11th just south of Division. It should be more than your average opener event (if nothing there will be more artists per square inch!), so I hope to see some familiar faces there. Until then...
Monday, February 7, 2011
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