A Slow and Sloppy Process

I didn’t think I would have the energy (mental or physical) to make art tonight, but my post-meditation mood was so dim and dreary that I knew I just had to push through that and do it. It’s the same stubborn streak that had me running cross country with multiple stress fractures in high school. Some people might call it driven, some might call it just plain stupid. I don’t know what it is, but I know I feel better with some art under my belt every night, so I just need to do it…just like I need to exercise, meditate, and apparently eat food (I’m not keen on the last one, but my body seems to require it).

So at 10 PM, I got my butt off the couch, wiped my face…multiple times, because I couldn’t stop crying for a while there post-meditation…and turned on the iron. Part of why I was apprehensive about starting so late is that the next section was hands…fingers…complicated little buggers…

But I decided to iron the arms off to the side and then put them on top of the legs, which worked pretty damn well. An hour later, I had both arms down about halfway up the biceps…

I’m about 200 pieces in, about 2 1/2 hours done. I like how it looks. More tomorrow.

While the pieces are laid out, I have to protect them from a cat lying on them, so I use the bins with sorted pieces to cover up all the other pieces…

Progress. Deep sigh. It really does feel better to do that. I need to write that down somewhere so I can remember. It seems like a duh moment, but some days, I really have a hard time remembering to do the things that make me feel better, push the misery off my shoulders and into the trash. Not that it will stay there, but it’s the thought that counts.

Midnight has been guarding my stuff…

Not really. She threw up on the Wonder Under and she leaves dirt everywhere…need to change her flea meds. I did clean up the light table, though, figuring I won’t be tracing Wonder Under for a while…need to finish these two quilts before the next one is due. Deadlines first, I guess…although there are two or three drawings from the last three months that are clamoring to be quilts. We’ll see…after December, when I get these two done.

I didn’t get much stitching done on the trip to Houston…I was more into reading, I guess.

But I did get some done…the backgrounds for the orange birds and getting the green birds sewn down…now they just need all their parts. I have another post to write about the vendors and shopping at IQF and some other stuff…like the apparent milk shortage in Houston.

Today, I had my students study these…

Sheep hearts (reasons why science teachers need cutting boards, hot water, gloves, and big knives). MMM MMM Good. Not really. Lots of squealing and some stupid behavior. It gets them ready for the eyeballs, which are way more gross and gooey and squirty. Two more labs this week…exhausting, lots of cleaning up after students. They will survive. I might too. Who knows?

I finished a couple of books on the trip…Elizabeth George’s new book Just One Evil Act…

This was a bit weird…it had some issues…but I love me some Elizabeth George, so I enjoyed it. Barbara Havers is such a messed-up character and Lynley is such a good guy (well, he can be a mess too, honestly)…definitely worth reading.

And then I read Michael Scott’s 4th book in the series about Nicholas Flamel, The Necromancer…

still loving this series. I need to wait a while to read the next one, though, because two more real live books (as opposed to the electronic ones) just showed up at the library, and they’ll be due in a few weeks. Plus one is for a book club (yes, I’m trying to do that again…we’ll see if I survive)…so I’ll have to finish it sooner rather than later.

I also finally finished this book, Broken Open, by Elizabeth Lesser, which made me cry every time I read it (hence the length of time it took me to finish it)…

Every time I read it, tears. Not sure why. There didn’t seem to be any one thing that did it, and sometimes I just found her incredibly irritating, plus I’m not really a God person and he kept showing up there. It was recommended by a friend who had read it and benefited from it. She wasn’t wrong.

I have quotes from the book…”For a while I just went off the edge of the world.”

“Today, like every other day, we wake up empty and frightened. Don’t open the door to the study and begin reading. Take down the dulcimer. Let the beauty we love be what we do. There are hundreds of ways to kiss the ground.” Rumi (this is my excuse for making art every day and blowing off the grading…I shouldn’t say that…I graded for an hour and a half tonight, so I’m not blowing off ANYTHING. But making more time for art is never a bad thing.)

“Our culture favors the fast-food model of mourning–get over it quick and get back to work; affix the bandage of ‘closure’ and move on. I am not a big fan of ‘closure.’ It sounds so abrupt, so tidy, so final. I prefer old-fashioned words like mourning, lamentation, and grief. They suggest a slow and sloppy process–one that involves emotional upheaval, interrupted activity, and dark nights of the soul.” I don’t have closure. Apparently closure should have taken me a whopping 51 minutes or so…well fuck that shit. I don’t even know that closure makes sense…I think our emotional existence is a constantly changing landscape and you don’t get to close off one part of it and lock it away, and if people are doing that, I don’t actually think that’s healthy. We need to process through it, wade through the shit and mud and have it cling to your shoes and clothes for a while until you can get it all cleaned off, and even then, it will rise up and slap you around every once in a while. It’s possible that my existence is somewhat messy in general, though…so I’ve had to learn to deal with that. Where do the drawings come from? Well…there…not locked up…but vomiting all over the paper. I wanted to draw tonight, but didn’t have time, speaking of vomiting over the paper.

“Our tears, and the calm hands of grief that follow, are not signs of some tragic and evil reality…Grief is the proof of our love, a demonstration of how deeply we have allowed another to touch us.” I’ve said this before, that my grief is a sign of how deeply I was committed…and I shouldn’t feel like that was wrong…I should keep my eyes on working through the shit, but I’m not wrong for the level of grief I’m experiencing…it’s related to the level of emotion I hold (held?) inside me. There’s nothing wrong with that. Without that depth of emotion, I probably wouldn’t be the artist that I am.

“Grief is often confused with depression or self-pity. While one can certainly go into a woeful tailspin during the grieving process, in the long term, grief is not the same as depression. If we gloss over our grief, we might become depressed. Unfelt feelings and unexpressed grief have a way of dulling life. It is as if with every grief we do not feel, we stuff another handful of our vitality underground, until we are numb or sick or embittered.” Yeah. That. I might feel dulled at the moment, but I’m really not…I’m feeling all of it.

For some reason, when I’m going through piles of emotional shit, I save quotes. I have notes on the phone and the iPad of quotes from books I’ve been reading. I have quotes taped to my office door from the post-divorce reading frenzy. They seem to help me focus. I don’t know why.

Toenail revisited: I managed to half rip my big toenail off on Friday night…it wouldn’t come all the way off though (yes, I tried), so I had to bandage it back down and let the ooze and blood restick the nail to my toe…goddamn, I wish it would just fall off. Sigh. What a pain. Sometimes I dream of a cleaver and my toe. Not good.

The most useful and exciting thing I’ve done in the last week? I managed to successfully pair my old bluetooth earpiece and the new phone. This was not as easy as you would think it would be, and required many bizarre maneuvers and clicking on and off in a particular order. But I was successful! I know. Simple pleasures. It took me a long time to get it done.

So. Mood all over the map today. Whatever. At least I was aware of all its wanderings…and I managed them. There’s nothing wrong with crying. It’s all getting me somewhere…Montana? Not happy yet. Mr. Meditation wants me to be happy. Content. Double sigh. I think Mr. Meditation has a simpler life than I do.

Make art. Save lives.

Something the Darkness Couldn’t Take

Hi. Do you see me? I’m that person crawling into a hole. Do you see me? I’m crawling into the hole and pulling all the dirt in after me? Can you see me? I’m crawling and pulling it after me.

I’ve been hearing this in my head all evening. I don’t know why. It’s just repeating. Like a whisper. Do you see me?

Sometimes the stupidest things hurt me right now, things I would have found funny or even cute before the tidal wave hit, they hurt…and not a little…the hurt I feel in my gut when I meditate, the hurt that feels like aliens climbing out, or is it zombies climbing in? Doesn’t matter. Either way, it’s pain, pain caused by others…but it’s also my reaction. I can’t disconnect…I can’t harness enough anger to disconnect. The anger is there, but so often I direct it at myself, even though I know I shouldn’t, that the fault is not there. Girlchild rails at me, speaks of vengeance, tries to understand how 9-plus years of connections are harder to break, to escape, to destroy…well, for me they are. She is so angry too…and I didn’t do that. I understand her anger. I would be angry too if I were her. She is my Mama Bear at the moment, because I can’t be. She’s protective, standing out in front of me, fists half-cocked, ready to go at someone on my behalf.

I made it through the gym. I don’t even remember working out. I was only half there. My muscles were there. Enough of my brain was there to go through the workout, and not in a half-ass manner…full throttle. And that part of my brain got me home and dealt with prepping for school and prepping dinner for the slow cooker and dealing with kids and getting in the car and going to pick up my passenger and driving all the way to Oceanside and holding my own in conversations and then driving back. It fractured in between, at the meeting, but I kept cutting out little bits of fabric and kept it under control.

But by the time I finished meditation, which was all about labeling feelings, and I realized that my brain was screaming at me, “FEELING! UNPLEASANT! FEELING! UNPLEASANT!” (the choices for labeling your feelings were ‘pleasant,’ ‘unpleasant,’ and ‘neutral’), I was already grabbing the sketchbook, even before meditation officially ended. He told me to open my eyes and have a stretch, and I stretched right over and picked up the book and opened to the first blank page (I say that so many times a day at school, I can’t tell you, in answer to “what page?”) and took the pen and it was moving across that blank expanse of white toothy beautiful page before I could even wipe all the tears from my face and neck and down onto my chest, where they fall when they reach the end.

When I reach the end.

I thought I was going to finish tracing Wonder Under tonight, but no. My brain had a different plan. I did try grading earlier, but I could tell my brain was fighting it…fighting the mundane, the work, the drag-you-down-further-into-the-fucking-muck feeling I was getting, the one I’ve been fighting all week, since last Monday. It gets worse and then better but never very good.

B. B for be? B for broken. B for bamboozled. B for bad. B for breaking. B for bastard. B for bearing…bearing it. I was thinking The Scarlett Letter…or a branding.

I’ve always put symbols in my work…the symbols are changing. Some of them.

So I am a bit more at peace, now that I’ve drawn. It’s not a happy peace. Just a distancing peace. That’s what labeling the feelings is supposed to do…to help me distance myself from the emotion and not wallow in it or make it worse, but maybe, at some point, to just let it wash over me while I be, and then maybe I won’t have to be that emotion any more. I’m not very good at the distance. Or maybe I am…because if I really wasn’t very good at it, I would be crying all the time, no matter where I was, and I do seem to hold it together for hours at a time when necessary.

At the meeting, I saw this out the window…

I think everyone else was socializing and eating and being friendly and I was staring out a window at a foggy grey sky and watching this beautiful bird and trying to just Be in the moment even though I wasn’t connecting to the moment at all.

Birds are often in my work. I need to draw more types of birds. I usually just make them up.

I’ve told you that both kids worry about me because of my braindeadness…my uncharacteristic mindlessness at times, my loss of memory, my inattention to detail.

Girlchild pointed out that I didn’t need to buy more ground mustard, that I must have just bought some in the last few weeks. I didn’t remember. She thinks we will never use it up…so now I have to come up with all-mustard recipes from now until we use it up. Just to prove her wrong. I really only have two recipes that use ground mustard, and neither in large quantities. We’re fucked. I’m going to die and have ground mustard left over.

Speaking of dying, I finished World War Z today…

It was OK…a little on the dry side. A little truncated. Not really a story, per se, but an interesting take on a story. I guess I could watch the movie now, if I wanted to. Do I want to? I don’t know. I’m currently immersed in all the PBS Mystery shows I have archived on Tivo. I’ve been watching Wallander and Endeavour…I like Endeavour better. He is more caring, less of an asshole. Wallander cares, but he’s an asshole. I don’t need more assholes right now.

I wrote this down from Endeavour tonight: “You go home and put your music on, and with every note, you remember that’s something that the darkness couldn’t take from you.” DI Fred Thursday

Yeah. That. That’s why I draw. That’s why I make art. That’s why I get out of bed in the morning. That’s why I don’t just give up. That’s why I’m writing every day. Almost every day. Because of that.

At the meeting (yes, I realize my brain is jumping all over the place, hence the multiple mustards), I cut out pieces for the Love quilt. I need a plan. I can get it cut out this week, and when I get back from Houston, I can start ironing it. If I can get it ironed and maybe even stitched down (that might take more mental energy than I have at the moment), then maybe I can quilt it over Thanksgiving. Maybe. Then at the same time, I can be cutting out the Wonder Under for the Celebrating Silver quilt, aiming to pick fabrics for it either over Thanksgiving or the first few weeks of December. Either way, it’s a plan. I need plans at the moment, even if I keep fucking them up.

So I cut out lots…

because it kept my brain from wandering off into the mists…

Someone please do something about the cat that is trying to be a scarf around my neck. Please. It’s literally perched up there between the back of my head and the back of the chair and trying to hold on. The stuff in the bag is all the scraps. I save them until the quilt is ironed down, because occasionally I toss a piece in there instead of into the bin. The way my brain’s working, though, I’ll probably forget I have them and I’ll just recut another piece. Or I’ll toss all the good pieces in the trash by accident.

Whatever. It’s progress. Movement anyway. No one knows in what direction. Taking my headache to bed right now. Hopefully it will let me sleep. Unless it’s an asshole. Don’t need more assholes.

Protected: Dear Brain:

Roomies Reviewed

I read enough that reading books for reviewing sites seems to make sense…so I signed on to NetGalley. Recently I read Roomies, by Sara Zarr and Tara Altebrando. It’s the story of two future college roommates from across the country emailing each other in the month before they go off to college together. Each author writes one character’s emails and life story, which is interesting in theory, but I’m not sure I could actually tell that was going on.

It wasn’t particularly obvious that there were two different writers.

The two girls have drama in their lives and that affects their communication with each other. It’s an interesting take on what happens in technological communication that is less likely to happen in real life, face to face. Misunderstandings are more common; we read so much into short or long answers and vocabulary choices in email and texts and FB posts when we can’t see what else is going on. There is definitely much more depth in the storytelling of the girls than in the email, and they spend so much time stressing over the email communication…I think that’s a good thing to point out to the YA reader. I thought it was well-written, although definitely on the light side of fiction, but it is a YA book and not meant to fully engage my old-lady brain, except as a reminder of my ancient past. I do remember sending actual PAPER letters to my future college roomie…we don’t talk at all any more. We weren’t particularly well-suited. My 2nd-year roomie was a better fit, purely by luck.

This would be good for a girl in her senior year getting ready to go off to college…it’s a good story and keeps your attention. The actual book will be released in December.

Protected: A Cushion

Protected: Ice Cream and Roses

Protected: She’s Falling to Pieces

Protected: What Obscures the Sky

Protected: Magic 8-Ball Says…

4 to 16 Characters

It’s taken me a while to get around to writing this review, but mostly that’s a time issue…it’s not because of the content. 4 to 16 Characters, by Kelly Hourihan, is not for the weak at heart when it comes to the internet and other electronic communication. It is composed of a lot of emails, texts, and online communication, which can make it difficult to read if you care about that (probably the target teen audience does not, and neither did I…it felt more real because of that). The story is about a teen girl who has retreated from the real world into the online one. She has many different personas that eventually become impossible to juggle, and she ends up having to deal with the real world, much as we all do.

The core story was good and kept my attention; it’s only fault was that hey, teens can be irritating sometimes, and she’s a teen. And the writing could be a difficult adjustment for those who don’t live on the Internet; most teens would have no issues with either of those things.

I reviewed this from an ARC via NetGalley; no money etc. changed hands. The book is due to release in early November.