a new week begins

i am dirt. and sweat. and ice. the roads are not safe out this way. this morning everything is frozen. anti-californian. i put on my freddie fruger sweater and went running down the highway through the slush and leaves. i dreamt of new york and berlin and travelling to all the places i've not yet been. i dreamt of my new painting and all the black roses i've been crocheting, the end of the year and a new year about to born. i dreamt about going blonde and wearing red lipstick. this is something i may actually have to do. i've never been much of a lipstick wearer. suddenly and unexpectedly, i am very interested in becoming one. i have no clue why. just the call. that call to make your outsides mirror your insides. to give shape and shadow to all those twists of soul and spirit. to make the windings of my mind and heart physical somehow. apparent. why this is being translated in to going blonde and wearing red lipstick, i can only say that something about it feels correct. i have no deeper analysis than that. it just feels like it could be the exact right thing to do.

transitions. encouragements. seeking a new lens to look through. the rituals of the new year are finding me. and maybe it's just a result of the life i've been leading the passed few years... the passed few months especially. all this running and working and reading and drawing. this morning i read this interview with William Pope.l and i felt like it was a moment of dumb, amazing, inexplicable luck to have stumbled across it. there are beautiful, gentle, necessary permission slips in there. encouragements and hugs and nudges... things i've been feeling a bit hungry for. but aren't we all? encouragement is a thing that seems to be in very short order in this world. i caught a lucky break today by reading this interview. a new lens, indeed.

my painting is calling from the other side of the room - a commission i'm working on - so i'm off to wrestle the black oil. but first, i've got to melt away all this crazy california ice from my arms and eyes. it is freezing cold here today. sheets of broken ice like panes of glass all along the road. weird.