Frankly My Dear, It’s a Mess

I’m still painting.   Still.   And not on canvas, not on board, not even on burlap (one of my favorite places to paint).  Oh no.  I’m painting walls.  And trim.  Still have white trim paint under my fingernails (and lately,  just west of the haphazard part in my hair).  I’m painting, and Frankly My Dear, It’s a Mess.  Everything is in Disarray.

My home is my gallery.  It’s where I hang most of my art.   My earliest motive to become an artist was a yearning to beautify my home.  In a sense, learning to paint  with oils (ah, timeless pigment, painterly textures!) was my first significant DIY project.  And it remains my most constant.   It’s kind of ironic to me that probably my next most consistent DIY project has been painting houses.  Walls, trim.   This is the third time.  There is a lot of wall and trim painting to do in houses.   And I’m still learning how to do that better too.  You’d think I’d have it down by now, but I don’t. [continue reading…]

Where’d ya go, sister?

Friends, Romans, Countrymen. Sisters. Lend me your eyes. If any of you remain to read (hello there Maurya darling, far far away). I feel I must explain where I am, lately. What I’ve been up to, why my voice here has been…diminished. Trailing off to a single monologue a week.

(Aside: The weirdest thing happens when I claim the floor for myself. Even here, even though I’m all alone in a morning kitchen with a laptop. It’s like I’m a character in a movie; the archetypal sweetheart ditz who finally gets the podium, with impossible explaining to do [aside within an aside: and what is up with that? after two and a half decades of silly movies, you’d think the sweetheart ditz characters would get that telling the truth from the beginning will save them all sorts of trouble by the end]).   I have the floor, and I am overwhelmed with this ridiculous urge to tell a tall,  irrelevant, unbelievable phish tale. And clog dance. Because I have an audience. I do sometimes clog. No lie.) [continue reading…]

Nonsense, But the Blurred Vision Thing is For Real.

Yesterday morning my favorite optometrist was diplomatic.  “I’d like to  take just enough of that strain off your eyes,” he said.  “They’re working awfully hard.; let’s see if we can give them a break.”

Which is what my last prescription was supposed to be doing, if I’d used it faithfully.  I’m not great with math, but I’ve had to wonder about probabilities and trends as I’ve visited optometrists over the last fifteen years.  Because each subsequent visit reveals that my eyesight has in fact worsened since the last time I visited.  Blurred vision, exponentially. I don’t think this can go on indefinitely, without my becoming not only entirely blind, but possibly eyeless too.  Empty, vacuous holes instead of eyes. [continue reading…]

Pumpkins, Rain, Anniversaries

(pumpkins, boy, and painting are all my own)

It is a packed day, but I’m feeling  mellow.    There has been so, so much to do and think about lately (more on that subject later).

Today is bursting with anniversaries.  Well, at least two, that I know of.  Besides the fact that it rained this morning, which always feels like a cause to both celebrate and weep over (you know, weep with joy…and bittersweet nostalgia,  inevitably brought on by mists and deluges and other atmospheric novelties). [continue reading…]

After The Rain: Where The Wild Plums Are

Mimsy and I went for a run in the rain on Labor Day. Of course. Why wouldn’t we? Since it was raining. Rain being almost always too good to be true—lately as rare as tanzanite around here (I looked it up; tanzanite is rarer than diamonds even, and beautiful, in transient, saturated hues…also, it’s found almost exclusively in Mount Kilimanjaro’s foothills, making it both rare and exotic). When Mimsy and I left, I slipped a camera under my jacket, wanting pictures of my favorite places being rained on, hoping the camera would be safe there. Mimsy slipped her tail under her belly, for similar reasons (although she’s no photographer, she adopted a pessimistic view of the whole running-in-the-rain-with-only- a-spotted-hide-for-cover concept). Before we’d even trotted a block, I had to return the camera to the foyer and start all over again with my reluctant puppy, dragging her behind me until her pitiful expression convinced me to carry her in my arms (nothing like a grateful dog’s tongue all over one’s face during a downpour). [continue reading…]

Summertime…And September Begins Tomorrow.

While summertime isn’t always easy around here, it is many warm, sweet things besides (and sometimes messy, sometimes hectic).   I wanted to write about all of them.  I meant to write about many more of them than I did.  After all, I had an entire summer in which to monologue. Or I thought I did.  My laptop’s hard drive is clogged with photos I’ve taken of gardens, salads,  summer fields.  Pumpkin blossoms, even a summer dress.  Plenty to muse over, ruminate about.  But time swept by  (though honestly, I didn’t even feel a breeze).  And now, it’s September tomorrow.  Fall really truly is almost here.   This afternoon, Frank and I sheltered under awnings and in galleries on Park City’s Main Street during a pre-September downpour/thunderstorm (we made several runs for it, but kept chickening out, stopping in the next closest doorway).  For the first time all summer, I was actually cold.  I kind of liked it.  And felt sort of…happy/sad, umbrella-less in the rain. Also, I gained a new appreciation for Twentieth Century Russian Impressionism. [continue reading…]

Of Wedding Dresses And Other Things

“As a writing man, I have always felt charged with the safekeeping of all unexpected items of worldly or unworldly enchantment, as though I might be held personally responsible if even a small one were to be lost.”
–E.B. White (who penned perfectly the conundrum behind my writer’s block conflict). [continue reading…]