Lights of August

It began with a silence. The sky was the periwinkle of one of his business shirts and I couldn't go back to sleep. Two years had passed and the dead wood was choking me...not to mention the plants.

It began with a little clearing, and turned into an all weekend all out symbolic excavation of the plants and revival of part of the yard. Hallelujah! And as with all good stories, it was not without pestilence, villains and risk of life and limb. 

As my boyfriend bravely tackled the sprinkler system and hacked down a few increasingly sturdy volunteer trees, I dug and separated and replanted and re-soiled - and discovered the most evil rhizome that lay like chicken wire under the WHOLE 60 x 3ft zone. It was barbed and tenacious and seamed symbolic of all sorts of things. It felt SO good to pull it out, bags and bags of it like some old knotted dog, or a bobbly hand knitted blanket.. It SUCKED and I was determined to dominate...which I did until nightfall when I was bitten by a spider 7 times up my legs and even once on my butt. The next morning it was revealed...it must have been the devil himself as they all swole up to the size of my palm. It was VILE!

 The next 2 days I wafted around high as a kite on Benedrill praying this wasn't a flesh eating venom and I wouldn't have to have a limb amputated. I needed distraction so I devised an outdoor lighting system for the yard...and went on to spear myself twice with 2 inch bougainvillea thorns and give myself a blister 1/2 the size of my pinky. What next...tetanus? 

And now to the point. I survived (so far) and made lantern hangers out of the cut trees, found some of my tin can lanterns and created a GORGEOUS magic outdoor space.

 This morning I glued a bunch of my tin can flower candle holders to the branches for variety and will have to try them out later this week.

 OOOOOhhhhh.....

 I'm super excited!!

figure drawing

While clearing out my parents house last month I found two huge piles of figure drawings I did up north 10 years ago. I had almost thrown them out - not knowing what they were...and I'm glad I didn't. Now I'm just not sure what to do with them. Here are 4 of over 100.

Lust, dust, bubble, rust.

Puncture, pop! Puncture, pop!

What is beyond the end of that everything right there?

There is no under my bed... it is out  there, beyond the screen, beyond the palms and the telephone wires, beyond the planes and the clouds and the rising moon over the mountains and the stars.

Air bubble...the there at the end of everything...there it is...another breath and another step

Years of escaping...our path is well worn...The hole grows larger and we are on the roof.

Under the stars safe in our bed, or on the roof with two stories to fall - there it is above and inside us...that infinite chronotrope...that forever that I've tried so hard to imagine - suggested by what the stars are not...forever... in another breath 

recycled painting

I had forgotten how fun it can be to recycle paintings. This one is collaged old oil paintings of mine with a thick layer of wax on top. Mmmmmm. Wax.

The garden shed

What is underneath this floor?

From bed last night as my eyes closed it came on as if by a switch. 

Breathe. Breathe. You are wrapped in warm limbs - you are safe...still, here...

but it was an assertive ruffle and the smell of the wet gravel was being impressed into my pitted sleep with black ink and a very sharp nib. 

From my bed and through closed eyes I saw air and dim light come up through the stepping stones in the entrance, and the blue of the darkness presented its self like a person - a guide. 

A soft belly pressed against my back in that warm bed...but I could smell the dirt and my cheek felt cold next to the ground...outside. 

I could feel my breathing get faster...

"Who lived here before you?" I asked.

"I don't know" was the tired reply

Why I began to cry I do not know.

But I cried for the thing that was burried and traped. 

And I wondered what it was...

and why it was there

and what was going to happen next