March 2024

“I push my paintbrush and conjure a new world while this one is slowly washed away…” — XTC, Ballet for a Rainy Day

“God, what a mess! On the ladder of success. Well you take one step and miss the whole first rung.” – The Replacements, Bastards of Young

“When it rains it pours, but you didn’t even notice. It ain’t raining anymore, it’s hard to breathe when all you know is the trouble of staying above the rising waterline…” – Kacey Musgraves, Rainbow

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So now I paint, and stitch, and make books. I pieced together some curtains for my room, from my stash of painted and collaged fabrics; some of them hung outside on the front porch, weathering for most of a year, first, and now they show through the morning light, and filter out the lone porchlight from the front of the (former) clay studio, sitting out across the yard and driveway in its dark. 

I still play guitar, and PlayStation. I’m a full-time job person, and a half-time Dad. I fricking adore oil paint, and had no idea that I would. Like my discovery of silk threads in the year or two ago, oil paints remind me of porcelain: that special, reserved status — almost too elevated or precious or legendary to approach as a material. But then, when I get over (again & again) my inbred hesitation and only-partially-schooled-and-therefore-imposter-syndrome, and just go for it… whew. Amazing.

90% off lightly used art supplies from The Idea Store sure doesn’t hurt. Freedom to explore; the rationale to treat paint and threads as if they were virtually free, and the goal is to use them up, so as to earn the right to buy more; because they were almost free, and that, in this one small aspect of life, anyways, is a fantastic goal to aspire to.

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What is it, to wake up and after first coffee want to do all the things, all at once? 

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I’m not sure if I believe that I made contact with that HP, then, and that its still accessible to me; but having the practically unwaivering desire to make things any time I can, as much as I can, is the sort of proof point I’d be looking for, if I were to make a systematic attempt at sorting that out. I don’t think I’m going to.

And what of that? Is it a plateau or a dead end? Or something in between — geez, maybe just an ongoing path, that sort of refreshes itself, yard by yard or brick by brick, as I move down it. Up it. Hmm.

“Uhmmm… having your best friend’s ashes in a ziplock right next to where I charge my AirPods is a little — uhm…”

“Yeah, I understand, honey. I’ll take care of that.”

moves baggie and pot we made together to a different tabletop in the other room; good intentions.

So.

In (much) more prosaic matters, I just got the Wemo “smart plug” that I purchased during pandemic re-situated (factory reset required, duh) into a useable, useful place, and holy shit, the ease of being able to ask the robot to just turn on a damn light in the former Showroom, without walking in in the dark, fumbling around for a twist switch that lost it’s knob around the time baby Maggie was born. 

progress

And wow does that take me back.

I watched (finally watched, my critic says) the HBO doc “Four Hours at the Capital”, about the treasonous weasel and his attempted insurrection, last week and h o l y  s h i t . I had no idea it was that close. I was still out on the news — completely embargoed — during the whole work-from-home-every-goddamn-day span of 18 months; actually, that’s likely when I started back to checking the NYT homepage once in a while, just to see the death toll and then run away again. So I knew J6 was a thing; I couldn’t hide so far away as to miss photos of it, etc; but I’ve been mumbling along like a vintage REM song since then, and wow what I didn’t know.

It’s amazing to me that the capital police didn’t just start shooting people. I would have.

That’s a weird place to stop, and that’s what Imma do. Stopping and always restarting; it’s all the same writing; just different eddies on different days.

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