Phoenix Island Review

I recently finished Phoenix Island by John Dixon.

This book started very dramatically and held my attention for about the first half. It’s the story of a 16-year-old kid, Carl Freeman, sent to to a disciplinary camp on Phoenix Island in the middle of nowhere. It’s a military-type camp and there is the typical hazing and bullying that goes on in these stories. Then the story changes when the boy makes a discovery about what goes on after the first month. As he grapples with his sense of ethics and Dixon introduces a new leader and set of information about the purpose of the island, the story seems to lose a little of its power and storytelling strength, unfortunately. The book ends typically, and I had a hard time imagining where it would go from there (sequel setup?).

I enjoyed most of the book; it is YA, and holds together well for that audience. It is due to release January 7, 2014, which is also apparently when the CBS TV show based on it, Intelligence, will air. I am interested enough in the premise to watch the show. This was a NetGalley book.

Out of the Dirt

I managed the gym, finished a good book (in one day…no idea how many pages it had, because the Kindle app says things like Location 405 of 3606, and I don’t know what that means), graded one period’s worth of journals (I only had one period left, so that was OK), bought thread so I can quilt up in the mountains, hung out with a friend for an hour or so, and ironed fabrics. Not a bad day. I managed it. There were some bad moments, true, but that seems to always be the case. I weathered them. I cried, but it wasn’t as bad as some Saturdays have been. I do miss going out to dinner and the movies. I wish I could go out dancing, but that seems to be out of my cost range, plus requires more people skills than I have at the moment. Doing things with other people is not my strong point. I even meditated, but my brain was like a 5-year-old with ADHD, so I just let it wander and reeled it back in over and over again. I’m not sure it was particularly helpful tonight. Oh well. It can’t always work ideally. That’s the wonder of the damn brain. It’s fucking unpredictable. Or maybe it’s predictably random.

I have about 2 1/2 hours in on the fabric choosing for the Celebrating Silver quilt…

I’m about halfway into the 200s as well. I’m up and out of the dirt as of tonight. When I start up again (maybe tomorrow?), I will be in the flesh of one of the daughters…I think of the Maiden and the Mother as daughters of the Crone…not sure why. Because they’re smaller and younger? Who knows. I didn’t want to start dealing with flesh yet…too tired tonight for that. Flesh has to be a run that flows, and with a quilt like this, it might need 7 fabrics in the run. Or I might decide to do two different runs, two shades…with the daughters in a lighter, pinker shade, and the crone in a more muted, greyed shade. Who knows? I won’t know until I pick them, and I kind of feel like I need to have a fresh brain for that, and I don’t have that right now. I have late night tired brain.

All the 200s are laid out…

There’s a bird in there too. And a heart, I think. Maybe a fetus. All that before I even get to the daughter, whichever one it is. Can’t tell…maybe the Maiden. There’s only 1237 or so pieces in this thing. I’m going to be ironing for a while. It would be nice to get it done before we leave, but I don’t know if that’s possible.

My plan is to start cutting these out at my rescheduled quilt class Monday night and continue up in the mountains.

I’d like to have half of it ironed by Tuesday…more if possible. It sounds like a lot of time, but I have a hike and dinner tomorrow, then doctor, soccer, groceries for Tday, some other errands, and quilt class on Monday…and Tuesday morning is a mess. So I don’t know how far I will get. When I type all that out, the thought of getting 615 pieces ironed seems unrealistic…that’s another 400 pieces, probably another 4 hours. When I’m not tired. Ha! OK, I have a goal. I’ll do my best to meet it.

I did go through the older sketchbook and marked some of the drawings with post-its. I don’t know if I’ll get more serious about making some smaller quilts this week, but I’m trying to at least keep it in mind, since two of my smaller non-nude pieces will be in Poway starting next week, so there is a market for these. I think I’m afraid to NOT have multiple pieces in progress at the moment…I don’t want any down time. Down time leads to depressoid time, and I’m good at that without any encouragement from a nonbusy brain. Trying to keep the brain occupied is an important task.

After finishing the cross stitch I’ve been working on for my SIL for the last 3+ years, I was trying to decide what to do next and decided that the girlchild’s Xmas stocking should be next on the list…I mean, I started it before she was born and she is now 16. Seemed to make sense. So I pulled it out and stared at it for 20 minutes, trying to figure out what in hell I had stitched…

I really did think I had stitched more, but more importantly, this line of stitches didn’t appear to match anything on the pattern…until I realized I had stitched it in the wrong color. Wow. I was about 9 months pregnant with the girlchild and the boychild was about 18 months old when I started it. It’s surprising my brain didn’t just fall right out of my head. I ripped out all the stitching from over 16 years ago and will start again at my next stitching meeting. Fresh start. Funny stuff. I did tell her not to expect it until she was 21, based on how long the one for her aunt took me…it’s not that I’m a slow stitcher…I’m not. I just only work on it for about an hour and a half a month at the one meeting.

I’ve been staring at this card all day…it was sent by two good friends sending me encouragement a few months back…but I love the dog and birds. Bright colors and funky.

Much appreciated. They’re the ones who posted the article that talked about the meditation app I use, Headspace…so it’s their fault I’m calmer now. Damn them. No, not really. I did actually use it the other day with a student who was in a mood…and it worked. Welcome to the calmer Kathy…or something.

I started and finished this book today, Every Day by David Levithan.

I liked it. I thought it was well-written. I can’t remember why I read it, although it could have been as simple as seeing someone else’s review. A person (hard to tell if A is male or female) inhabits a different body every day, and one of those days, falls in love. It was nicely done. I would read another book by Levithan. Because I don’t have enough books to read? I remember the boychild worried once about what would happen when he ran out of books to read. I don’t think it’s happened yet. I have two more books on the library ebook system and another two on the Kindle app at the moment. I guess vacation is time to read.

I’m hiking tomorrow; far as I know, the hike is on…looking forward to this one…will be dispelling some head demons up there, I think. Hope. Trying to figure out if taking the sketchbook makes sense. I can’t draw and hike, but maybe I can draw in the car (mountain roads? Might be a mistake…don’t know).

Out of the dirt…into the snow.

Running Roughshod over Me

If Friday’s a moody bitch, Saturday’s an amusement park ride…not a carousel or an easy roller coaster…the kind that throws you up and down, and you’re never really sure whether you’re having fun or about to die. It’s never mellow and calm…and the bad is really bad, like Stephen King started to write your story. It never really gets fun…you’re either sick to your stomach or screaming with terror. You can’t possibly stop and go somewhere nice…somewhere pretty and calm. Saturday’s hijacked your life and is kicking the shit out of you, and she’s not ready to stop, even when you try to force her hand.

One of the grief books I read talks about the times when you feel the worst, the most alone, that you should try to schedule that time…by the hour, even 10- or 15-minute swathes of time. Know what you’re doing before the bad time even starts, and hopefully you’ll be able to just plod along through it and not fall into the vats of acid on either side of that path.

Sigh. Yeah right. I made multiple plans for the weekend. Because my toenail finally fell off, I figured I could handle closed-toe shoes and a hike (finally). That’s tomorrow. I’ll let you know how that goes. I actually know the woman in charge of the hike, so that helps. I also signed up for a book club thing (sigh…I am somewhat troubled by this, but I love to read and…I don’t know what and…) that’s next week. In the last two or so years of my marriage, I started doing life drawing one Saturday a month…I went to a studio space downtown and this artist I knew would hire models and we’d pay $5 to show up and draw or paint. It was great. I knew half the people there, I was semi-social, and I messed around with a variety of materials and styles, even drawing on fabric a few times (none of which have ever been finished, for a variety of reasons). I eventually stopped because Saturday mornings got filled with soccer and other stuff, and the chick in charge moved to Arizona, and I never found a replacement. Then I read about Dr. Sketchy’s Anti-Art School online somewhere and found a local…um…chapter? I don’t know what to call it. I put it on my calendar probably 5 years ago and promptly never went. It was never convenient. There were always better things to do, people I wanted to hang out with. It’s not like I wasn’t drawing on my own, and this was touted as FUN! And I’m suspicious of fun. Really. I am. Well, I’m suspicious when other people are labeling it as fun.

So even now, with Saturdays being a vast expanse of shit and hell, I couldn’t go the last two months, and even today, I had talked myself out of it. I had this to do, that to do, there simply wasn’t time.

And then there was. I was actually late, about 15 minutes, but I went. I drove to a bar in Hillcrest and I paid my money and I sat and tried to remember how to loosen up enough to do those 1-minute, 2-minute, 5-minute drawings. Even the 10-minute ones seem too short…I’m used to my big drawings taking a couple of hours (actually, the drawing for Earth Stories took me over 20 hours to complete), and even the small ones I used to do in restaurants are at least 15 minutes usually, unless they’re really simple. So it was hard.

(the model was Zoe Tantrum…no, that’s not her real name…but she was also an amazing singer, sort of conceptual opera)

But I eventually got it. It helped that it was in a bar and I could order alcohol. Actually, I can’t drink most hard alcohol…makes my heart race…but they had cherry cider…and it was good. And it helped me relax a little. And I realized…

(no, she’s not holding shoes, and she’s wearing a shitload of tulle, which is remarkably difficult to draw)

Because of meditation…because it makes me aware of how I’m feeling when my brain is semi-quiet, it lets me hear myself feel…

I realized I had relaxed. That I was sitting in that bar with about 25 total strangers while this woman held wacky poses and I was relaxed. Until I thought about it, of course, and then I tensed up again. Sigh.

So, just so you know, there’s a theme every month and the model dresses to the theme…this month was Fae, hence the pointy ears. Strangely, the book I read for book club is ALSO about the fae. I’m feeling weird about all that. The drawing above was a contest, a 50/50 contest, where I drew for the first 5 minutes and then the Brit next to me took my drawing and I took his, and we drew all over each other for the next 5 minutes. I can’t tell you how difficult it was to START drawing all over someone else’s work, but if you stop thinking of each drawing as a precious commodity, which in this situation, it definitely is not, then it’s much easier…not a single one of the pieces I did today will be used for anything…they are just good for the hand and the eye and seeing the body better after 10 years of not drawing from life. This will be my 4th (?) time going back to life drawing.

Anyway. We didn’t win the prize. I’m OK with that. On the last one, I tried to meld sketching with my personal drawing style.

The costuming made it difficult. But I still think it was a good thing, because there was one pose I just couldn’t get right, so I gave up and started Kathy drawing…

There we are. There’s the weird. She was wearing some metal hoop structure to wrap the tulle around. Yes, it really did have chains. I haven’t finished this one.

So it was a good experience. I had fun sitting there and drawing. I was relaxed. I will do it again. In fact, I’m kicking myself for not having spent the last 5 years making time for this at least once in a while. I made that mistake…but I’m having a hard time working out what would have been the solution. On the one hand, I was trying to balance a personal life, being a mom, and having a very demanding job, as well as art and going to the gym. Very difficult. And in the end, making time for the personal life was not successful…so in the future, as I try to balance the things that feel good and bad and have-to’s and want’s and should’s and all this crap…I still don’t think I have the right answer for that. I don’t think it would have helped anything for me to have been going to this for the last 5 years…but what do I know? I know nothing.

I was up very early this morning for girlchild’s last official game of the season. If they won, they would have been in 1st place.

My camera battery died before the girlchild made her team’s only goal (seriously? I suck.), but they lost anyway. It’s OK…they played really well…it was a really good game. PLUS, I got a ton of grading done. So I felt like I could do other stuff the rest of the day. Grading looms over me and makes me feel bad. I hate that.

This woman was recording her son’s game with the iPad…but what was funny is that she wasn’t watching the actual game…just the screen. Her arms must be really strong…I couldn’t do it.

Don’t think we’re done with soccer. High-school tryouts are all next week. Sigh. Of course, girlchild’s back was PERFECT today. Whatever.

I also made it to the gym today, finished a really irritating book, The Flamethrowers by Rachel Kushner…

I kept a ton of quotes from this book, and it started really strong and I was excited to read it, but then it wandered off into history and politics and artspeak and annoying language and behavior, and I just lost it.

Here’s one of the quotes that drew me in: “I feel changed. Like, say my mind is a sweater. And a loose thread gets tugged at, pulled and pulled until the sweater unravels and there’s only a big fluffy pile of yarn. You can make something out of it, that pile of yarn, but it will never be a sweater again.” You could knit another sweater, though. Anyway. I read it because someone ELSE recommended it, but I don’t remember who…and I’m not recommending it. Well, I shouldn’t say that, because I have very particular likes in fiction, and you perhaps have different likes. So try it, and we can commiserate if you decide you don’t like it.

I also meditated. I bet Mr. Meditation didn’t have a cat trying to climb on his lap while he meditated. I had a hard time with meditation tonight. I was crying before I even started. Something about being home alone on a Saturday night, but I had spent my entertainment money for the week at the art thing and I had stuff I needed to get done and I needed to get to bed at a reasonable hour, so this was what Saturday night looked like…

And it wasn’t until I stupidly looked on the internet and realized that my life had been hijacked and put out to pasture or something (I always mix metaphors) and that the things I used to be able to do and want to do were either off the table, but just for me, or I couldn’t go because…well, because I’d have to be way more brave than I am right now, and right now, I am a scared little monkey half the time…so I cried. A lot. And when he said that I had to be willing to “sit with the mind, no matter how it is,” I lost it. I tear up even now, reading that. Silly. Sigh. It’s MY mind. Dammit. “Meditation is a skill that needs practicing.” OK. I’ve done 74 sessions. I’m better. I was aware of my feelings at the sketching place. I am usually aware of them. They are just often so overwhelming.

I even made a fire (I’ve been freezing all day).

And I tried to take care of ME. Because she’s not a bad person and even when Saturday tries to push her down, she tells her to fuck off and find another victim. I worry sometimes that I am repeating the activities from post-divorce, but then I think, well duh. Those are the things that make you happy: movies, drawing, hiking. I have to be really careful with money, so that’s an issue, but that’s why I plan.

I cut out more Wonder Under tonight. I’m making sure to take a new picture of what looks like the same thing every night I cut stuff out, so you can see my progress.

Or because I am slightly insane. You pick. (It’s NOT the same. It’s NOT. It’s NOT.) I’m about 4 1/2 hours into the cutting. I have about 2 3/4 yards of Wonder Under to go. Sigh.

As life and love run roughshod over me…I draw. And now I (hopefully) sleep.

Wishful Thinking

I get to milestones and they don’t register. Or they don’t register correctly. You finished a step in making a quilt! Cool! Yup. Not feeling it. It’s almost worse getting a step done…because then I think, wow, you don’t feel any better, any different. You are still sad, depressed, slogging through the days, taking the next step and the next one, waiting for something to make a difference, to make your heart show up, to make the feelings get out of the sad realm. But they don’t. It’s just the same.

I ironed today.

Every tree needs lightning bolts.

In the long run, it doesn’t really matter that I ironed today. I also helped the boychild with his college apps; we got through the worst of it (well, he still has to write essays and ask for recommendations, so that might be the worst of it, and I have to pay for all of it, which also could be painful). I cleaned a bathroom. I grocery-shopped. I wrote a quilt statement. I did a bunch of stuff that needed doing. I worked out. I added a new bunch of exercises to my regimen, because if I’m going to be an antisocial, lonely old lady, I might as well be a strong, buff, antisocial, lonely old lady who does not have osteoporosis. None of that really mattered. I don’t know what matters.

I found the eyelid, after I had cut another one. That whole pile is pieces that I’ve found after I cut another one, or pieces I had cut out twice, or pieces that were totally the wrong color. I don’t know what to do with them. It seems mean to throw them out simply because I fucked up when I cut them out.

I’ve found that most TV shows right now rub me the wrong way. People are so shitty to each other in relationships that I can’t handle it; it makes me feel sick. So I’m watching X-Files. Mulder is kind of a jerk sometimes, but he’s well-meaning. I can handle shows from the 90s. Great. And Masterpiece Theater Mystery. That’s about it.

I didn’t start ironing until after 9, I think. I don’t know where the day went. It just went.

Once I got it all ironed together, I pulled it off the ironing sheets and rolled it up while I got the background ready to go, ironed it flat and laid it out on the floor.

I laid out the base first…the tree is easier to put down once the main section is ironed flat.

That’s most of it…missing two toenails, a fingernail, some drops of blood, a question mark, some dots over i’s, and a plug. I did get those on too, but didn’t manage a photo of that. You’ll see it again, once it’s stitched down. I’m hoping to do that tomorrow. It’s about 40″ wide x 50″ high. Something like that. She’s not happy, is she. I drew this back in June…before my life fell into a crack in the earth. I guess she knew what was coming. But she’s not crying…

I have to admit to a new emotion that’s showing up in meditation. Why do I have to admit to it? Because it’s scary. Admitting to it will hopefully make it less so. What emotion? Fear. Straight up. I’m scared of my future (or lack thereof), I’m scared of not feeling safe and comfortable…like…almost…ever. I’m just plain scared. I thought I had the future figured out. I knew shit would happen…it always does…but I thought I could handle it. I didn’t know then that everything that made me feel safe would just be gone. Without any input from me, without any chance to have a say or work on things…just gone. And I know that’s what happens when you put trust in other people, which we have to do to be in this world. OK, some people don’t…it’s true…but I don’t want to be one of those people…I’m already a bit of a hermit, and I know I could go further along that road, and I may very well wander down there for a good long time. It’s quiet, there are very few people, and I don’t have to deal with other people’s stupid shit affecting me.

But I don’t like being scared. No one does. We rush around when we’re anxious and scared and we try to control everything so we feel better, safer, and it doesn’t really work. It’s inside us and we have to work on the part inside us that reacts to things; that’s what causes the fear. It’s not the other people, the things…it’s us. So if I see scared in meditation and I feel scared in meditation (and elsewhere), I just have to face it and figure out how to make it feel safer INSIDE me. Because that’s where it lives.

Tonight’s meditation kept talking about my mental state…and I kept thinking, “like California?” A state as in a physical place with a flag and a state flower and state bird and state motto, “In nothing we trust,” and a state tree. A state of mind. A state of being. A state of matter. And then Mr. Meditation started talking about the blue sky, and that’s when I lost it…my state? The theory is that the blue sky is always there. It may be obstructed by clouds, sometimes light and feathery and easy to push through, and sometimes big and black and dark and thick…but if you just push through, you can see the blue sky. I don’t know how thick the layer of big black clouds is, but I can’t see the sky. I know it’s there, though, and that makes me sad…knowing it exists and I can’t see it, I can’t figure out how to get high enough to see the blue. It’s there though.

So yeah, that makes me cry. I’m fucking hopeless some days.

And during the 20 seconds when we’re meant to let the brain just do what it needs to do, and we sit back and observe and “note”…it’s screaming…full on screaming its head off…and I’m crying. That’s not stepping back. That’s not noting. That’s responding. That’s watching the movie and feeling it in your gut, your heart, where your heart used to be but where there’s a giant sucking hole now. That place.

Boychild sent me this link to the DSM-5 reviewed as a dystopian novel. It’s actually fairly amusing, especially when you know you’re experiencing a few of the things in there. I should just think of my life as a fucked-up dystopian novel, write it as a book, and make a couple million (someone’s debut novel just made them that amount…seriously? What am I doing wrong? Oh yeah. I’m not writing a book.).

I realized today that I had meant to ink the Earth Stories quilt, but then I forgot. Or something. My brain not being itself and all. So it’s photographed for the catalog already, but I didn’t ink it. So I was thinking…should I ink or should I not? It doesn’t ship until March or April of next year. I have time. How the fuck did I forget the inking? I don’t know. I wasn’t there. My brain, it wanders off and does things without telling me, and I don’t find out for days or weeks after. I could just leave it alone (the quilt, not my brain…my brain needs me to pay attention to it). Fuck. I don’t know. Does it matter if it’s different than the catalog? It probably won’t be hugely noticeable? I don’t know. I will have to keep thinking about it. Maybe I could think about that instead of all the angst my brain currently dwells upon.

Wishful thinking.

So…I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse…

As a NetGalley reviewer, I recently read (viewed?) I Survived the Zombie Apocalypse and All I Got Was This Podcast, by Chris W. Freeman, Korey Hunt, Daniel Chabon (Editor), Rich Bonk (Illustrations), Andrew Mangum (Illustrations), Alan Kupperberg (Illustrations), Anthony Diecidue (Illustrations), and Jerry Beck (Illustrations).

So first of all, I do like graphic novels/comics/whatever you want to call them…but I have some limitations. First of all, they’re short. I like longer stuff. My favorite graphic novels are those big thick books that collect the last years’ worth of comic books, and they have to have a STORY. And characters that I give a shit about…one of my favorites is the Powers series, with Christian Walker and Deena Pilgrim…

Troubled souls with good hearts, good stories, and I didn’t feel like female characters were just there for the boobs.

Zombie Apocalypse is no Powers. The story was OK…but I don’t understand why comic women have to wear cantaloupes where their breasts should be. Then again, this comic is definitely tongue-in-cheek trying to make fun of the zombie fanaticism. When the main character makes cookies for the zombie females because she wants friends, and then tries to dress up like them…it’s amusing. Unfortunately, it’s not amusing enough to make this a must-buy. It’s a quick read…it’s somewhat funny…but unless you’re a full-fledged zombie historian, it’s probably not going to be high on your wish list.

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.

Category: Books