out with the old

last night when i got home from work i made Dump Cake for dinner. my mother's recipe. i must get the one for no-bake cookies from her soon. these are things that i absolutely must learn. and the sooner the better.

we woke up and had more cake for breakfast. J made philly cheese steaks for dinner. i talked to my mom on the phone and then went through my closet yanking out things i haven't worn in two years, things i'll never wear again, and began a collection for the Goodwill. more than half my closet is in a big black garbage bag now, and a good portion of the contents of my dresser. it's funny the things we hold on to. the things we no longer need or even like. they are with us because that's their role. to stay in one place. to stay where we left them. to stay put and don't move. today i am picking them up and moving them out. may they find a better, more worthy abode. this is my christmas and i think it is a very good one. instead of adding, i am subtracting. and in between all this, i've been reading Repat Blues blog and scribbling in my notebook. as soon as we entered december i can't seem to spend enough time there. my notebook has become my real life. a chrysalis maybe.

lately i also can't seem to stop fantasizing about going blonde and wearing red lipstick and jo malone perfume. orange blossom or french lime. sometimes i walk through Neiman Marcus in Union Square just to stop and get a squirt of the stuff. the scent is so wonderful it borders on addictive. my friend scored a small vile for me and i can't stop smelling it. such an extravagance for me! i've been wearing it every day knowing how sad i'll be when i run out. i'll have to schedule walk-throughs at the department store again. ha!

there is just one week left on the calendar. i am amazed by that. what a swift pace this year kept.

tonight, we listen to the rain.

plug away

i very rarely gaze at the ceiling anymore. this is a major proof that i am no longer 15. i looked at the ceiling a lot when i was 15. but when i was 15, i really had no other place to be or go, so laying in bed, laying in my sadness and anger was the thing to do. music loud and tears and yells (if i was home alone). or laying silently. focused on the small horrors, looking for a way out, making pictures from the ceiling stucco.

yesterday i noticed there were cobwebs up there so i grabbed the broom. and then i cleaned my bedroom. top to bottom. and beautified it.

i would love to become one of those productive people who undertake a massive cleaning rampage when they are feeling upset. i would love that. and i'm thinking that response to Upset has more to do with nurture than nature... but maybe not.

i was a horribly sloppy child and there wasn't much my mom could do to get me to clean my room other than "You're GROUNDED to your bedroom until it's clean!" ha! and of course, i didn't want to be locked inside my room at that age, i wanted to be outside playing, so i'd start cleaning my room and get distracted by a toy and it would take all damn day to get that room clean. i became a bed-shover-under. and i think that is an inborn reaction. no other little child planted that idea of cleaning in my head and i definitely never saw my mother shove the mess under the bed, so imagine my surprise when she poked her head under there and said "what's all this?" i was like how'd she know to look there????? hahahaha!

i didn't shove anything under the bed yesterday. i put everything away and then i re-arranged, hung different paintings on the walls, even washed the walls with windex. i had to lose myself in something and cleaning seemed a much better thing to lose myself to than laying in bed staring at the ceiling. and afterward, i felt so much better. the room is gorgeous again. plus, a friend of mine from back home is coming up on sunday. she'll be here for a week. we've been friends since we were 14, met walking home from junior high. she is my longest friend. we've never even had a fight.

and so of course i want my little home to be as perfect as possible for her. not that she even cares about that sort of thing and, generally, neither do i... but my little cottage is so packed with paintings and big drawings and projects at this point that i must find a way to establish some kind of order. even if it's only a semblance of order.

today i will dust and straighten the bookcase. this is a major undertaking. MAJOR. my bookcase is actually two HUGE bookcases, side by side, taking up an entire wall. and, in some places, the books are two rows deep. sigh. i'll pretend i am 15. or partially 15, and blast some angry music. while the day away in loud guitars and yelling and cleaning. :)



for the 15 year old girl within you:

good morning!

new forks in the drawer. forks of my choosing. can you believe this is the very first time its happened? it's true. i've moved away from my hand-me-down flatware and got some that i actually like. form and function. a style of my own choosing. for however small this seems, it actually made me very very happy. ha! silly, i know, but it's the small things, right? and also, new bowls in the cupboard. bright white porcelain. just two. one for me, one for my sweetie. and this ensures there will never be more than two bowls to wash on any given gluttonous day. i'm going to hide the other bowls and only use them if there's company. and only if it's company who request soup or something that needs to be eaten from a bowl. i'll hide them and not tell my sweetie where they are. yep, i hate cleaning this much. and so i'm devising crazy little schemes like these, whittling down so there isn't much to clean. and it isn't so much a choice based in some sort of anti-consumerism (though i'm on board with that too except for when it comes to cool shoes and art supplies and books), it's pretty much an anti-cleaning campaign. the less there is to be responsible for in terms of dust and crap like that, the better. the more time opens up for painting, for play, for laughter. and so i whittle whittle whittle away and make space for better things.

also, i finally got through the huge stack of composition books i bought early in the year. i filled the last page of the last book yesterday. this is a proud moment. and so now i've decided to make my own notebooks for awhile. i have so many loose sheets of paper and scraps i've saved that need to be put to some sort of use. besides, i think notebooks of the hand-made variety generally look cooler... although i've always been partial to the black and white speckled composition book. and for as silly as it may sound, the type of notebook you use definitely influences your practice. at least it's influenced mine. i need a notebook i can be rough on, scribble in, scratch out entire sentences, make mistakes, spill ink and coffee on. those fine leather journals just don't work for me. they force me to be clean and polite in a way that is sabotaging and endlessly boring. i find it hard to be honest, to be brave, when i'm worrying about my penmanship. any other writers notice this?

good morning!

thursday. i like the name of this day.

i slept-in today. not by much, maybe a half hour. and it was so nice and snuggly and warm in my bed. my sweetheart came in and rubbed my back to wake me. a pretty nice way to greet the day. :) and so i got up, made my beloved coffee, and wrote in my notebook for a solid hour. and as soon as i tucked my pen away, i grabbed my paint brush. the aprons on the new maid portraits were calling first thing. i've learned to listen and not fight their call. i've learned that i shouldn't ignore them. my practice suffers hard when i do. whichever project starts yelling for attention is the one i spend the day with.

yesterday, the house itself was screaming at me...

september was a strange month.
i neglected a great many things.
i was distracted...

so the laundry piled up and paintings leaned against every available wall waiting for a hook to hang on and the carpets groaned under the traffic of all my projects. i am a tragic pile-maker. all sorts of piles, some made of paper, some made of books, dotted the hallway even. my strange cleaning mania reared up and i got to work. i cleaned almost all day. crazed cleaning like washing the walls and stuff like that. insanity. but it feels so much better now and i have space to work in again. maybe that's why the maids were calling me so loudly for attention this morning... i had an apron of my own on all day, pretty much right up until bedtime.

for as often as i talk about cleaning on this blog, one might thing i'm a neurotic neat-freak. nope. just neurotic. :)

and so it continues...

geez. round 2 through my portfolios. it is never-ending, i swear. when will i see the bottom of the art pile? the massive problem of storage and archiving and yadda, yadda, yadda. the major issue here is that i'm just at a total loss as to what i should do with all this work. the vast majority is work on paper. and the vast majority of it is good work too. but it just doesn't fit with my current portfolio at HANG and it doesn't fit with the current inventory at black fence. where to send it? where oh where oh where? it's too good to toss in the recycle bin, that's for sure. but storing it has become such a big, sticky issue that i find myself completely overwhelmed within minutes of trying to find a solution. maybe the only thing to do is go through it all, piece by piece, photograph it, and try to compile some sort of "new" portfolio of work and find another venue for it to be available through. maybe. but even the thought of that is daunting. we're talking about no less than 8 huge portfolios of work here. i am not counting the closet full of little paintings on canvas i still need to contend with. any insight in to this problem is completely welcome. entirely welcome. in fact, i am begging for advice! any system at all that you may have had even the smallest success with i am willing to try. except for burning it or something like that. 'no fire near the artwork' is definitely a commandment in my household and shall not be broken. anyway... help.

good morning, sunshine!

i am back to my early morning schedule, back on that good, grey horse and OH how i have missed it! i had slipped back in to an old routine the past few weeks and i knew at the time that it was no good. no good at all. i saw how, even here on the blog, i suffered. my lethargy dictating when i wrote and how i wrote. it was glaring and it made me feel bad. but i suppose i needed a little reminder of how good the early morning schedule is for me in spite of being a night person by nature. i've always loved staying up late but i've realized that it's mainly due to the conversations that have taken place in the wee hours- for some odd reason our words seem more romantic, more poignant, more whatever in the witching hour. i've decided that that's sorta teenage (in a bad way) and that i need to out-grow that... at least in terms of day to day living. besides, i know exactly who i picked that habit up from and it's time to set that down. the cleaning spree i'm on is really about me more than the house. much more. and in a lot of strange, hard to explain ways, it is a very deep, very private form of painting, of poetry.

the arts are often used as therapy. here, i am reversing that equation. therapy becomes art. it exceeds and excels its station, its title, its function. i am reaching back in to the corners and getting out all the dust, getting the hair up from the carpet, no inch escaping my notice or hand. everything is touched, considered, fixed, cleaned, put in its right place or shoved out the door. i am trying to get back to that place of newness where all my possessions could fit in two suitcases. this is a romantic fascination that will never happen- my books alone could fill ten easily. but its the desire that is the point. its the work that is the point. a very private practice that will only bring good. there are things that i am finally strong enough to let go of. there are things that i am finally strong enough to live without. there are things that i no longer have any interest in using as a way to define myself.

i cleaned all day yesterday. all day. and i finished one of the potholders. ha! i can't tell you how damn proud i am of that thing! i noticed that i don't use my skills to benefit my own home. all the stuff i make gets sent out in to the world- which is wonderful! that's where art works its magic. but i decided i needed a bit of magic for myself as well... and more art on my walls than just my own. yesterday i framed other people's art and today i'll try to rearrange the walls and get them up. today, i will continue the magic that swirled through my home yesterday. today will be exactly the same. i can't tell you how happy and excited i am to finally be doing this. it has taken a long, pained year to get to this point where i am finally able to unload all of this. i am finally returning to my strong self and i am smiling and hopeful and back on the good, grey horse.

cleaning...

i finally opened the box i didn't want to open- the one that houses my dairies. there's stuff in there dating back to when i was 14 years old, hopelessly romantic, and full of adolescent sorrow and anger.

i did the hard deed and threw the majority of them in the recycle bin. i didn't even ruffle through them the way i have in the past, looking for the little golden bits of writing that bounce out from the blue lines. i only checked the dates. i know what was going on in my life by just checking that and whether or not the "good" writing had started yet. i saved a stack of them and scrapped the rest. i don't need the document. i have the memory. and words follow a person around whether or not they are ever even read.

there are things, i suppose, we all hold on to, are afraid to let go of... or maybe just afraid to name the current situation: that person isn't me anymore. it feels horribly false to pretend otherwise. and in the spirit of clearing out relics from the past and making room for new memories and hopes and even hurts, the diaries had to go. that girl isn't here anymore. the hand writing looks the same but the words aren't. the dreams aren't. and i'm done with that old sorrow. some stuff is better off abandoned, forgotten, forgiven if possible.

all this sorting and weeding through has brought around uncomfortable and weird dreams. some of the dreams are memories. some are fears. precious few are welcome. when i'm done with this, they will go away and my normal good dreams will return. it is merely process. a 'working through' of long put off brain shit and heart shit. nevertheless, it is good work. it makes me good.

home...

it isn't that i've been sad lately, just feeling quiet. feeling still. going through the little that remains to be gone through- relics, nic-nacs, objects. it always wakes something up. always. but there are so few ghosts left this time around that it is a happy battle. the chaos i threw our home in to a week ago is almost reined in. i'm making myself go slow, putting things back or out the door thoughtfully. whenever i begin to feel anxious or overwhelmed by the task, i lug my canvasses outside and paint. today 3 big crows lined up on the driveway and watched. it was odd but comforting too and they were silent- no heckle and jeckle taunting as i pushed the oil round and round and stretched it out and out and out. now i am making myself a set of new potholders. yep. :) crocheted in the bastard stitch. black with a grey heart smack in the middle.

life...

sorry for the interruption in the regularly scheduled program folks- i felt i needed to step away from the computer for a couple days. i even took the weekend off from painting. i threw myself in to the mundane things of a life- cleaning, re-arranging, discarding. i've neglected certain things too long and now i feel this huge need to literally throw away everything i own and start fresh. no relics from the past. none. i've only ever felt this way once before that i can remember. and i was so frenzied about it, so over-zealous, that later i missed some of the little, insignificant things i threw out. so i'm trying to be a bit more thoughtful this time. a bit more considerate.

anyway, now that i've begun i have to finish because our little home is currently in a complete state of chaos. it's stupid messy right now. boxes of papers and poems and old drawings and nic-nacs that i dredged up from the back of the closet are scattered everywhere. i've made 'yes', 'no' , and 'maybe' piles. my neurosis is showing. ha! and the neighbor even accused me of being pregnant saying that this was my nesting instinct taking over. hahaha! i assure you, this is not the case, no way. just a very basic need to refresh my life... and feel a bit more in control of it, i suppose. sometimes i feel a bit directionless... more than a bit lost. i have a strange profession, a life's work that there really aren't any maps for. no boss to go to and ask for a raise or vacation pay or better insurance. there's no summer or winter break. there's rarely even a weekend i take off from work. i live with it and cater to it and run to it whenever it calls. everything i do somehow fits back in to my practice. every conversation, every evening jog, every word i read eventually finds its way on to the canvas. 'what you put in is what you get out' is definitely the case in art. all the arts. so it's hard to find a balance sometimes. it's easy to over-look things, to ignore the laundry piling up, to be happy in your tunnel vision and say 'it can wait'. this is part of that dreaded artist ego- we make value judgements. nothing is as important as art. nothing. sometimes we get negligent of the rest of our life.

but it's monday and i will get some painting done in spite of having backed myself in to a corner with the need to re-arrange and sort and discard and clean. i have no choice but to tend to the mess i've made. still, the canvasses are waiting and so is a little hand-painted book and this, this, that, and that.

it's time...

between layers of paint i cleaned my house and bagged up some old clothes for the goodwill. round 4 of the cleaning/weeding/sorting fiasco is here. it's so hard. i've somehow managed to become horribly sentimentally attached to most things i own. and although i've done a pretty good job of pairing down, clearing out, and making space for a the new life i'm attempting to build, i've got to do better. it's time to let go of some stuff i've really been putting off dealing with: old photos and letters and art. it's always hard to throw out things like that but i feel like a huge burden will be eased once i do. the maid paintings are teaching me how to let go... the importance of letting go... the importance of forgiveness... of moving away from anger toward something much more refined and light-

compassion.

i've got to learn how to extend it to myself.

all-male revue...

funny little side-effect of working on the maid portraits: my tremendous aversion to housework has been horribly amplified. it's a bit embarrassing to admit, but i'm actually having a pretty tough time remembering when i actually did the dishes... i mean other than merely washing the ONE dish i'm getting ready to use. GROSS! yes, seems i am a dude in my own right. a bachelor who just so happens to be female. which sort of makes our humble little home a big-ass bachelor pad of sorts. i mean, my sweetie is legitimately a man and i've always, to one extent or another, exhibited traditionally (or stereotypically) "male" tendencies or characteristics- the aversion to cleaning being one of the more funny ones. so after i noticed this, i realized that, historically at least, painting is a traditionally male pursuit. my sweetheart is a mechanic- another traditionally masculine profession. throw in the fact that neither one of us seem to think it's our responsibility to do the laundry or the dishes after a long, hard day at work... the fact that we're both kinda, sorta pig-headed... and we'd rather watch MMA or "Deadliest Catch" rather than beautify our surroundings... we've got a totally typical dude-house here. ha!

i'll be taking a break from painting early today to do ALL the dishes. :)

back to work...

oh, i can't tell you how good it feels to have the second Lineage painting completed! after i finished and photographed the canvas yesterday, i got to work on number 3 for about 2 hours and then decided it was alright if i took the rest of the day off. and it was. i took an evening walk through the vineyards with my neighbor and our dogs, found a new favorite flower (i have no clue what its name is),talked for hours, and (of course) enjoyed some tasty, tasty, tasty chardonnay. :)

today, i'm back to the regular program of coffee, morning writing, The Jog, and a full day of painting. i've got a few errands to run too- another trip to the Goodwill is in order. the more i get rid of, the better. our little cottage is looking so spacious and light-filled lately, i want to keep up my steam with that end of things.

it's so easy for me to ignore the dishes and laundry and all the stuff that comes along for the ride when you've got a place of your own. gone are the days of mom when the dishes magically cleaned themselves and the carpet was always fresh. this is the part of adulthood i dislike- cleaning up after yourself. ha! not that my mom cleaned up after me (we had our fair share of housework and chores growing up), i've just always hated cleaning. i hate it. those commercials where the women are having a vacuum race with big smiles on their face just kills me. nothing could be further from the truth. nothing. i know Snoop Dog enjoys vacuuming... he finds it to be calming... but he's a big ol' pothead and i'm not.

good morning, monday!

sorry about not posting during the weekend- super busy! and with nothing terribly exciting or art related... unless, of course, throwing out old drawings that have been following me around since my community college days counts. and even though i feel much better now, yesterday i was a bit despondent about the whole thing. i get attached to things quite easily- a habit i am hard at work with trying to break. i have all sorts of sentimental attachments to things, objects, items that i'd be better off without. it's hard work and not the least bit fun to let go off things like old photos of people you aren't friends with anymore and weren't really friends with in the first place. it's hard to let go of old letters and bad art and nic-naks from a decade ago... but it must be done and so i rise to the challenge again. this is round 3 of my somewhat-spring cleaning and it has gotten quite cut-throat around here. my sweetie has been very compassionate about the whole thing and very encouraging as well. he seems to understand, completely, how hard it is sometimes for a romantic girl like me to throw out an old teddy bear.

but now it's monday and, with the weekend and it's emotionalism under my belt, i am back in the studio and already brewing myself a second pot of coffee. thank god for wondrous hazelnut and oil paint. my 'grey girls' are coming along so nicely. i must be on the 14th layer of paint by now. still nowhere near being done but having a ton of fun working on it and re-learning so much. it's a painting that i feel gratitude toward. and my second 'maids' painting is going pretty well too... i think i'll start number 3 later today and really jump in to this series with both feet. i'm just too excited about it not to. i printed out a picture of 'Lineage' and tacked it up in my little studio and have felt so much better ever since. i really do love that painting. :) but she deserves to be out in the world and given the chance to work her magic.

space...

today: a little painting, a little crochet, a few more things tossed in the goodwill bag. i'm trying, TRYING, to make myself be pretty cut throat about the whole cleaning/weeding/sorting streak i'm on. i'm picking up every single thing i own and asking myself, "if the house caught on fire, would i grab this?" well... the answer is no, of course, to most of what anybody owns... but i'm in a place where my style and aesthetic approach to living is in extreme transition. i feel this overwhelming (and good) urge to sort of begin again in a lot of ways. maybe it's the long-awaiting, highly anticipated, hungered for arrival of spring? maybe it's the economy craziness, who knows? but i know i'm not the only one wanting a more "back to basics" lifestyle. the majority of people i know are going through pretty much the same thing- deciding what "value" truly is. and it's an individual thing. i am pleased to have so much more space for painting and making and books and art. SO pleased! later tonight i'll stretch a new, great big canvas and hopefully get some paint laid down on it tomorrow morning. i started another new painting today so i'm in a pretty good place. excited and eager and inspired. nice.

good morning, monday...

been painting since 6:30 this morning- started a new canvas, which is nice, but i'll admit it feels a bit lonely now in my studio without my ladies there to keep me company. i would've loved to keep them around a bit longer but i've gotta keep the art train moving and make space for new things. i've got 6 canvasses going at this point and i'm really pleased with the majority of them. 2 are pretty much "practice" pieces but you never know- could morph in to something worth showing.

and i'm back on track with the whole cleaning, sorting, weeding extravaganza of my home that i started a month ago: round two. the consignment shop ended up being a fairly worthless idea so i'm lugging everything down to the goodwill. i'd rather donate the stuff than suffer some snooty woman critiquing all my lovely things that i'm only getting rid of to make room for myself. jerk.

i hope everyone had a lovely weekend and is excited to start a new week. i sure am. i'm full of caffeine and feeling ready to work hard.

ahhh...

still knee deep in my cleaning/weeding/sorting/discerning/discarding extravaganza but i'm sufficiently stocked up on coffee and managing to hold on to the initial inspiration that jump started this whirlwind of change and renewal.

today i took it a bit easier than i had the last few days and made time for painting and drawing. i finished another big gulp painting and will be taking two of those little sweeties to jen at SF Studio tomorrow afternoon for the march exhibition "Delicious". i'm so thrilled that people like those funny little paintings! yay!

and i started a sketch book - something i have tried and failed at many a time. this time around, it isn't just for quick sketches, notes, and doodles. i'm taping in old postcards from art shows i saw and admired, bits of poetry, scraps torn out of newspapers and magazines, and some real honest to goodness painting as well. i figured if i jammed all my little tokens of inspiration in to one place, it'd not only help me control the chaos that is my studio, but also become an extremely useful tool in terms of reference and ideas. i'm tired of losing good ideas because i don't have a space to store them. my neurotic, obsessive mind isn't good for that. :)

i've also made a huge pile of old artwork that needs to be gotten rid of. it's mostly stuff from the early years of studying art and really, really bad. some i'll keep because it's always good to hold on to a few pieces from a different time in life (to laugh at, at least), but i've saved way too much old art and i simply don't have the space for it all. and, back to the ritualistic outlook of this cleaning spree, i don't want the past following me around quite so closely anymore.

i'm an entirely different person than i was 4 years ago when i first moved to the Bay Area. i mean, i still laugh at farts and tell off-color jokes and have a wardrobe dominated by the color black. i still have my romantic fixation with broken, rusted objects and used books and hand-made sweaters. i still talk people's ears off and stay up way too late and drink way too much caffeine. but i've also got a much deeper set of ethics than i had before moving here and going to CCA. i've got a much stronger sense of self, a clearer idea of right and wrong (as it applies to my own life, anyway), and a much more forgiving, patient, compassionate demeanor. i've grown up alot and i suppose i just feel like it's time to let this new person flourish, not crowd her with relics from the past. i even threw out some old journals! GASP! it just wasn't worth waking up old ghosts to find snippets of good writing. so... in the recycle bin they went and, hopefully, their next incarnation will be much brighter and happier than their life with me was during those years.

as for today, i am feeling great. i feel positive and capable and happy. inga (my dog) and i have still been pretty diligent about going for jogs and hikes. we never miss more than a day at a time and those missed days are becoming fewer and fewer. i feel healthy and strong again. life is good.

weeding...

for the past two days, i've been cleaning, sorting, and discarding things from my home... and i'm still nowhere near being finished. after quitting my day-job, i started really thinking about what kind of life i'm trying to build and i took a good, hard, honest look at myself and decided it was high time to take charge of my surroundings in a more personal, meaningful way.

there is definitely more than a small amount of truth to the cliche that the things you own begin owning you after awhile. there's no way around that fact. and it isn't necessarily something to feel bad about until you apply that truth to specifics. i have absolutely no problem with living a life ruled by books and art or even my collection of broken porcelain dolls, but i've got a big problem with letting my life be ruled by junk: the accumulation of rough years, tough times, and broken hearts...

until two days ago, my bookcase was overrun by more than just my massive collection of books. it was the home/storage unit for old nic-naks that i've been carrying around with me since i was 15 years old. i looked at them all, one by one, and realized that the majority of them were only with me because i didn't question their belonging with me. in other words, these things are with me because i didn't ask myself "do i even like this object anymore?", and overwhelmingly, when i did ask myself this question, the answer was a firm, unapologetic, cold NO. soon, the bookcase had been cleared of all my past baggage and i found myself weeding through my closet, tossing clothes all around the bedroom. i pulled out sweaters and dresses that i haven't actually worn in at least two years, holding on to them only because i think they're cool and that maybe i'll wear them again someday. this attitude needed to be scrapped along with the clutter.

soon, this project of weeding through became about much more than just creating space in my home, it became about an unpacking and unloading of the past. it became about finding my real self amid the chaos, clearing out the damage and trauma, and letting myself really become the new girl i need to be... the person i've become but can't see through all the objects and clutter and baggage. i am cleaning house in more ways than one and it feels wonderful. it feels amazing actually. getting to the point where i can let go of objects, realizing that they can have a better home elsewhere, or simply that i am no longer in need of whatever romantic, nostalgic fascination that brought the item in to my life is very freeing.

having grown up poor, it's always been very hard for me to get rid of things but the time has come to get over it, get over the past and move forward. the time has come to make choices based in ethics (like quitting the job) so that my outer life more closely resembles my inner life. i am matching things up and getting rid of the things that bog me down.