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I am getting side tracked here while going through old artworks. Mostly I was searching for more work inspired by Proust and found these made from old clock parts.

 

The first one with the appendix to Remembrance to Things Past cut into a continuous narrow strip to fill the entire sculpture. And another with moving parts that adjust the speed of time.

So much collecting of suitable parts for these works. I loved making them but am happy to have it behind me. Arthritic hands are a reminder daily.

I built so many house forms in my studio. All using odd materials like this one using reclaimed scarves layered together with a urethane to make what I called, “skins”.

Some houses went onto boats.

See what I mean about being side tracked? I could do a whole blog about boats…some other day.

My physical therapist is back from two weeks off. I tried my best to do the assignments but fell short on occasion. It is hard to put the boxing gloves on and only hit air. I started punching the bag at gyms in 2014 and loved it. Here was the first one back then.

I loved how patched up it was. Then the one at the local gym was used by a group of less-than-intelligent teenage boys to test how much weight it could take and disappeared from access. I asked them to just hang it in the lady’s room handicapped stall so it would be safe and I could use it. No, that was not going to happen. But my therapist remembered how much I loved the bag and got me back in my gloves with more lessons to punch his protected hands as he calls out punch numbers. The jumping around, jabbing punches and staying on my feet is very good for balance.

So yesterday I asked him if I could buy my own bag and hang it in the garage. He thinks that is a fine idea. Patrick just happens to have a spare with almost as much character as the one above. He will install it when he comes in July. In the meantime I surpassed all my numbers from the last therapy session and I am now working on stepping over objects on the floor.

My doctor treated me to a mother’s day outing at the local playhouse. It was interesting and everything one would imagine of a local live theater. I also went to a neighborhood luncheon with eleven women at one table. So my social skills have really been taxed this week when you add in a wine tasting event.

I need to get going now…wish this was more exciting. Looking through old artworks did not make me sad. It made me glad that that part of my life is over and I can move on. What I did see in poking about in the files was that I had so much to say with my work and was willing to say it…not much of my work was made for the market and mass produced, except paper sculpted jewelry. Everything else had a story.

Got to go now….

Til later…

 

I parked next to this supremely ugly tesla truck in the grocery store parking lot. It has all the look of a war machine. Much bigger and much uglier than its pictures. I was too far behind the tall, handsome man getting into it to ask about the statement on the side and back, or whether the engine really fits between those two front wheels, or why he wanted to own it, or what he thought of Musk, or…… Maybe next time I will postpone my shopping to quench my curiosity.

Then back home on my walk around the neighborhood. Much better.

I did a few more drawings for the pages depicting leaves.

Early this morning I had a follow-up CT scan. I need to get two a year for the next two years. I hope I am remembering that correctly because I tend to shut down my hearing when it comes to the medical side of things. Then off to chair yoga after sitting still and trying to talk myself into not going and just having a nap. Chair yoga won the discussion. I was simply too tired to make a good case for skipping an activity with health benefits. I did sit in the parking lot there and think about turning around and going home. But I got out of the car in time to ask a couple going in if there was a rule as to how long one could sit in the parking lot and try to find an excuse to go home. He said, “You’re here now, just go in the door!” Good advice.

Tomorrow is poetry. I am taking in a follow-up of the recent poem about Proust. Not sure I posted it here, so will repeat it now.

Proust

 

It is one of those days

when I am compelled to pull

Remembrance of Things Past

From the bookshelf.

 

I have never read it cover to cover.

And bought it only to open randomly,

just to see how many words

he squeezes between commas.

 

How much he has to say,

in page-long paragraphs,

that force me to start over again

in search of meaning.

 

And so public about his passions!

His pen must have flown

across the pages,

shuttling emotions from heart to paper.

 

Never once thinking them too private,

too personal,

or too uninteresting

to those who he will never know.

 

Within the hour, I am exhausted.

Close the book and promise myself

to care enough

to write it down.

 

So tomorrow I take in these older sculptures along with this writing of explanation.

The words I will read:

Art under the influence of Proust            S. Webster

 

“I suffer the worst withdrawal

that might follow

a recent repetition my

daydreams have allowed

that

few small triumphs

have

tarnished from the

trap

of self-fulfilling fantasy.”

 

This is written in the fragmented phrases glued to a ribbon under tension and looped between two pullies (one behind the other) that are fixed into a carved slot in a stick of wood. They extend below the slot like wheels that let me roll the words forward as I read.

 

An open-fronted case of what looks like three volumes. Their spines are titled, Lost I, Lost ll, and Lost lll. When pulled from the case they reveal themselves to be boxes with flip top lids that open to a maze having an antique marble following the open doorways through chambers with text on the top of the walls. We follow along and read as we go.

 

Lost l   Suddenly everything is lost

“She had no idea

what had happened to

her knowledge no longer

believed to be stuck in the darkest corner of her

mind. Everything

is lost.”

 

Lost ll   It is lost, lost, LOST

“Again he recalled to his mind

that all

his knowledge and memory

would be forgotten and the bitter disappointment would

yield to the inevitable

all is LOST”

 

Lost lll   I am desperately lost

“I never thought I would have

forgotten

this distant coming and going

of my mind and I will not have patience to accept

that I must have lost my way.”

 

The clunking sound the marble makes as it bumps into walls to find passageways to the next hallway is so much like what stumbling sounds make as we search for words.

 

I like these two pieces. I like even more how they made me feel when I made them. And now, at eighty years of age, I like the incessant bumping into walls by the marble trying to find words of meaning. It is like writing.

Right now I am part way into a new short story of an elderly man…scrap that! Old man.

When a memory occurs to him, he can only come up with one word relating to it. So, carrying on a conversation is impossible. One word he uses repeatedly and with emphasis is, “fuck”. What else would he say when all else fails? The only way his story gets told or the only way he will matter is totally in my hands. I wish I did not like him so much. I wish I could just leave him partially present on the first two blue-lined yellow legal pad pages buried under a couple of sketchbooks. I wish he would stop whispering, “fuck, fuck, fuck.”

But he does matter. So I will go back to following him around if only to see what happens next to frustration, anger, hopelessness, etc. in the lonely life of someone I can learn from.

Better get back to fulfilling my desire to get 7,000 steps in each day.

Til later….

I am sitting in the sunroom with a rum and coke, popcorn and thinking I need to get a blog off. Playing on my Iphone is the latest Robert Galbraith Cormoran Strike novel. I am not a fan of J.K. Rowling because of her gender identity bigotry, even though in this country one would think we are used to it. Actually last week I listened to the first Harry Potter story just to be carried away by the reading of Jim Dale. She (Rowling) is quite the story teller, and I like this latest one in the series of the complex character of Strike, better than the others. I remember writing about her first one in the series that she seemed uncomfortable writing from the shoes of a male main character. Not so now. She seems to know him quite well.

This morning it was back to chair yoga. Working with the physical therapist has made this easier. I have more security of movement. But the best part is near the end where we each concentrate on parts of the body in an order that gives such relaxation. I could almost drop off by the time we say, “Namaste” together. But in the beginning we are supposed to concentrate on something to be grateful about, something to be positive about, something to hope for….

And I think that in this country there is little to be grateful about when so many still spout the lies of the abhorrent president and his Nazi-leaning sycophants. At my age, soon to be 81 years of age, there is little time left to see the recovery from such ignorance.

I can escape into writing and drawing. This past week the basket makers of Tasmania were gathering to weave and stitch together….so I joined them.

I might go to poetry tomorrow and read this one about a state of hopelessness that I wrote during Lee’s dementia.

 

I Wish                  S. Webster

 

I wish, I wish, I wish

I wish, I wish….

until I don’t

anymore.

I wish

I had known

that would happen.

 

Time to close and go heat up my leftover pizza. And an Aussie wine!

Til later….