Some say it will take a couple of months to come back from pneumonia. Others remind me it may not return to the degree it was before. All I know is I get tired just doing nothing. I have a week or two left of physical therapy here at home. There are new exercises based on balance. I miss walking around the neighborhood and stopping in for a glass of wine and a visit. So here I am with a glass of red and my blog for a chat.
I worry that if I don’t keep drawing and painting in my sketchbooks, I might lose that as well. So I have kept at it and try not to notice if the new pages are a bit slack compared to earlier ones.
Nineteen more single pages before this one sixth of the book is filled. I think bugs will be fun to do in the opposite-opening one sixth. I must have had such high ambitions for myself when Gian Frontini showed me this binding. He used much heavier paper in his sample. I must say my ambitions for myself have floundered some.
I was at a consistent 10,000 steps per day and now am struggling to get in 2,000. I told myself that next week I will raise that daily goal to 3,000. Seems unlikely to reach that this afternoon….maybe the week after.
One of the toughest balance exercises is holding onto the counter, standing on one foot, letting go and counting to five. Doing five reps of that on each foot. the left leg up is quite cooperative…the right is not getting the message. Good thing it is done with the counter in arm’s reach.
With all the sorting and storing of things I thought it was necessary to haul to here, I did come up with a new drawing for the Philosophical Considerations Book.
Wish I knew then what I know now. So much tagged along that is not the least bit interesting and doesn’t even bother to call my name. Once I finish taking a good hard look, I will decide whether to find new homes or just toss out.
I hope to make it to the first poetry meeting in a couple of months this coming Thursday. Maybe this week I can get some new writing done. I don’t want the writing tarnished with tiredness and fighting off the desire to just take a nap.
Still working on my latest short story. I don’t write sci-fi or fantasy. I don’t have the brain for it. But I was wondering about a character in a story that might be having difficulty adjusting to new surroundings, and just suppose while standing in front of a window near sunset, the shadow of a tree came through and was closely aligned with her shadow…both inside the house. What if out of curiosity she adjusted her shadow to slip within the tree’s shadow? What if she stayed there until released by the morning sun coming in the window behind her?
Now if you find that a bit odd, imagine me trying to explain it to the mayor while we were having coffee the other day by using my coffee mug and IPhone to set the stage. He smiled and said something like, “Interesting.”
I think that is what I miss most…having someone to talk about art with and story possibilities with. I miss my tribe. The students who eagerly stepped aboard knowing they were in the safest place to explore all the passions not easily shared. I miss them terribly.
I look at all the workshops offered online and wonder if those students have found expression there. I think not. Mostly it is advertised as finding your own voice, but in reality, I suspect most of the work is similar…using the same tools and materials and marks. And all the while the makers wondering how it will look published or on a buyer’s wall. What really makes one student’s work different from the next?
Years ago I had a student at a local folk school who expressed her personal travels and stories by cutting her finger just a little each evening to mark her personal journey on a map that covered an entire wall by the time we got to “show and tell” at the end of the week. I and her fellow students loved how she took this opportunity to put into a visual form all that she had felt…not so much those who wanted to see product, a table full of product. Do you think we will ever see enough of “product”
BUT, I do keep in mind what the dearest of friends told me many years ago, “Sandy, some of us just want to make stuff.” And so they should.
Til later….