Plein air paintings, studio art and lessons
The other night, on our way down the bike trail, a ladybug landed on my arm and it hitched the whole 9 miles to the brewery. I made sure it stayed safe because there’s no insect cuter and I’m all for public transit.
With it in mind, I got to work last night at my desk. It’s a great group; I love this nature journal exchange we’ve got going on at Moly_x_9.
I’m mailing Scoach’s Moleskine journal tomorrow an it’s headed for Hawaii.
I can’t do it. But I could.
I could say it at breakfast and he’d start helping to make it happen: we would both be on our computers, on the phone, in between meetings, ignoring less important matters. Mealtimes would come, we may or may not follow. At the end of the day, tomorrow even, we would have in our hands a game plan on recycled paper and napkins, bits of whatever we could find, printouts with cost analysis, a hotly written list of pros and cons, monkeys and butterflies romping in our stomaches.
I sit in bed typing this and look over at Chas, who is still sleeping in bed beside me with his arms outstretched, as he owns this bed now, as well as me. In fifteen years he will be in college, one can expect; in just twelve short years, so will his brother. College money. Though we are preparing, I am staggered by the costs of college, these days. Over ten thousand dollars more per year than when I was in school. That’s what I discovered when I browsed that graduate degree program in painting, tonight.
Grad school. I’m batting my eyelashes at grad school. Am I insane? I’m completely out of my head insane. I don’t need to give someone $70k just to prove it, AGAIN. Give it up already.
Doodle and paint, repeat. And don’t forget to feed the kids their meals tomorrow. Jeez.
I think I may be over another brief periodic creative slump. As annoying as they are, they tend to be short, and this one lasted less than a week. It hit me that the inspiration I need is at the beach, low tide, and I haven’t been to the tidepools in about a month. We were set to go this afternoon, Damon was actually going to get back in the water while I watched the kids, hunting for sea stars and stuff, but the cold rain started falling. Even though we didn’t make it to the coast, something within me stirred. After three days of fruitless painting, doggedly dabbling blind beyond enjoyment in a frigid studio, I’m finally feeling my own pulse again. Some mexican beer, lime and salt, red meat and Blonde Redhead seem to have helped.We saw Blonde Redhead in Austin a few months ago at ACLfest, where they gave a sweaty, ethereal performance in the midday languor, linen sticking on skin. Tonight I feel the music breathe like some sort of cosmic summer breeze through the house, and I begin to daydream about the long hot 3-day marathon date with my husband and of the stark newness, then, of Kuzu’s breathy falsetto voice, and of trying to sing, myself.Sometimes the surest way to clear a mental roadblock, or a loss of mojo, is to do something completely scary and new for a change, this I know. And Damon has challenged me to sing to his music. Playing bass along with him is enough pressure and I already met that challenge. He also challenged me to face my fear of surfing by putting me on a board before a wave in the Pacific. If for only ourselves, my heart still stops at the though of exposing this abstraction of my voice. I don’t consider myself a singer. But he believes in me. Within these walls I might venture beyond my securities. You won’t hear me, so I will try. But you can send me quiet thumbs-up, because I’m scared to sing. Me? Sing. If ever so imperfectly, I’ll try.