I had a lovely dinner with kind people who thought I could use some wonderful food and company. Very nice! Then facing the house alone when usually it is Patrick and Marla helping put the two twig trees up, I managed alone. Still using sticks and stones to keep it all together, I really do not like the fake greens I bought a couple of years ago and plan on giving them all away. A few more twigs among the deer and I think I am finished!
It felt good but exhausting getting it all together…so rewarded myself with a Manhattan.
Even managed to bake myself a quiche during all the decision making of how and where to hang an ornament.
I also made a trip into town to buy local and small. I stopped at the new coffee shop to see if they could fix the flat white they promised. Apologies to Melbourne, where coffee and baristas are top notch…but the flavor was wonderfully strong. They just need practice as you can see. The pumpkin muffin was very good and I bought a loaf of bread…a very dense sour dough…good for toast.
My final order of birch sticks arrived, so I finished off the pots our front.
Then today I inked up the wood block. Not crazy about how it turned out…but am making do with a bit of cropping and mounting on black before attaching to cards.
Next year I will return to the etched images on polymer plates. I still have plenty left from Melbourne Etching.
I met up with some of the poets from the groups I recently quit going to and feel I should return. One of the women I really miss continues to call and hopes I will come back to read. I have decided not to expect solid critiques…just people eager to be heard. I have been working on essays and some poetry. The subject I would like to explore is the privacy of being ignored. It suits me…probably too well. It reminds me of the poem I wrote some time back titled, Position of Periphery.
Position of Periphery
Our place is somewhere on an edge
away from those centered and focused.
It is a not-belonging place
with expansive views
where we are mobile
and deliberately uncommitted.
Free to choose and change,
we remain inaccessible …. transient.
Free from doors closing behind us
and the constraints of expectation.
Here on the periphery we can
try on the skins of otherness
….and then discard at will.
Anyway, being ignored is a luxury of sorts. I need to find the words to explain why that is so.
And on another subject, remember the part of my essay about my father deciding for all of us what was allowed to be moved to Florida? Well it is best to let you know that he and I were fine,,,no holdover feelings of not mattering to him. We were fairly close. Within a few years of our moving, I decided I was tired of his complaining about tasting soap in his drinks. He was convinced we, especially me, were not rinsing properly. Remember these were the days when it occurring to him to wash and rinse his own glasses was simply never even thought of. I took a small pleasure in putting the tiniest drop of dish detergent into his highball glass, for my bike and for my dog. It was worth the scowls and a few years later, he and I enjoyed having a drink together.
I smile whenever I think of my long-departed parents. Once you get over being convinced you are actually adopted and muddle through the mortification of teen years, you realize just how much can be learned from parents.
Best be off… the quiche is calling with another small glass of Aussie red.
Til later….