a little bit of guh

I have over-saturated myself with the internet this past week or so, and not in a good way. No, just in that old way that seems to feed SLB, to nourish her beyond the point that everyday insecurity can. She’s loud and fit right now.

Also, she’s angry that I’m not going to let her have any orange words right now.

I haven’t picked up a pencil in a few days, and I’m just over that. I’ve had enough of her.

I’m reassembling my doodle spot, and then I’m shutting off this computer for a while. I really need to teach myself some moderation in this thing.

the new kitchen

Watching this vid by Milliande inspired the hell out of me this week. Sure, we use different materials and themes and such, but I am really starting to fall in love with grid style journaling. I've done similar things before... but just, you know CLICK!

Yeah, I figured the writing blog illustration shit would eventually start sliding over into the art journal. I didn't so much count on the art journal/writing stuff just not fitting so well on the writing blog. Not yet, anyway, but it's all still in the pre-dating phase. I'm just glad to have pencils, to be honest.

I'm not even screaming with frustration over the fact that the journal is just too lumpy to get good scans anymore. See? Calm.

So many thanks to Milliande. My brain has been busy.

And here's Janie and Charlene in the new kitchen.

They're just glad that Michael does all of the cooking.

moving on...

Moving past the last three weeks of sinus problems and television brain jelly. Sometimes I wonder if my attention span disappears like this every year at this time.

I can't remember.

But I did pick up the pencil again. It's a start.

confession.

  

 

Having a bit of a dry spell.

trying to plan the spontaneous...

Half here, half there right now.

 

Lots of faces and no backgrounds. I has a flip-flopped crazy. Anyway, this is the last page I actually finished.

I've developed this weird habit of making components of things this week. Hopefully I'll figure out how to make the most of that.

I just can’t seem to find my blue sky today. Feeling dulled down, and like I can’t even work up a tear for it. I have hope, though, that this is just one of my days. I have a few excuses that might even be reasons, but they’re just too tired to tell.

Hope comes from knowing how often I absorb inspiration without even realizing it. I hope my brain and my heart are just taking a little sponge break.

Sick of drawing your little orange slice flowers, are you?

At times, but I find myself drawing them by the dozen. Sick of you too, SLB. Don’t even try to get me worked up today because it ain’t even happening.

Over the past couple of weeks I’ve completed three 8x10 canvas panels, three small wood pieces, and three journal pages. This is incredibly productive for me.

I am currently trying to ignore SLB. She has a bucket of anxiety and wants to use it to shut me down. Sitting here writing this is taking more energy than I have.

I have a blank 16x20 stretched canvas propped up on the chair beside me, waiting for me to face my fear that I can’t make enough to cover large surfaces anymore. The fact that I am going to cover the shit out of that big white surface just made me grin a little bit.

I should run. Orange slice flowers refuse to draw themselves.

friends, SLB, and humpbacks...

Wherein I shrug and hem and haw and explain SLB again…

Yesterday a friend of mine was reading my last blog post, and he turned to me with fire in his eyes and a fighting look on his face. “Who is this saying these things?” He was even in a determined posture when he asked this. He was ready to TCB.

I love my friends.

I think I shrugged and bit my lip and tried to look all nonchalant. “Oh, that’s just the ball of self loathing that lives inside me. She’s always orange.” See, no big.

His shoulders relaxed, and he gave me one of those looks that only a real friend will give you. “Okay,” he said, then went back to reading.

Have I mentioned that I love my friends?

The ones who get it in one or two bizarre sentences, who manage to slip in a little look that says they’re always keeping watch. You know, the ones who give you big buckets of freedom to be, but who will also sit you down with a coffee and a chat and call your ass out if they think you might harm yourself by just being the you that is some scary times you.

Anyway, I think he realized that writing SLB is just my current way of trying not to internalize so much. I mean, I can’t speak for him, but he did let it go.

Aside from reminding me how amazing my friend is, this little moment also made me think that perhaps not everyone who stumbles across this blog understands immediately that SLB is just me confronting, well, me. I’ve been letting her speak for the past couple of months, and have just become accustomed to allowing her out. I put a few words about her in the sidebar, but not everyone sees that stuff.

SLB is short for self loathing ball. Some people call it the inner critic. When she pops up here, her words are in this color and usually italicized, so she reads like this. Sometimes she doesn’t even show up, but some posts are pretty orange.

This way, I sort of feel like I’m putting up a flag for most of the negative stuff.

Having gone on for so long about the hostile bitch in my gut, I figure that now would be as good a time as any to share a page that managed to sneak up and surprise me a couple of days ago. Turns out this page is about love. It isn’t so much about romantic love, but more about the love that is still there when romantic love is absent. How odd is it to find that I still believe in that, and that it can sometimes pat back the anxiety? It is reassuring to me that I can honestly express this sort of love with art.

Who knew?

swim or fly?

Swim or fly? Why not both, right?

That’s a bit trite, don’t you think?

Just fuck you right now, SLB.

Niiiice.

Just you wait; pretty soon I’m going to gumption up and start talking about love. Yeah, you heard me right. Love. Just not this very minute.

*snicker*

I always seem to get hung up on mermaids, even though my experience with the ocean is very minimal. I think my subconscious is trying to push me away from the typical mermaid image. Perhaps one day I will do a bit of research and a lake mermaid will fall out of me. Who knows, right? Maybe I’ll just continue to make shit up, which is pretty much fine by me as well.

It seems like it has been a long time since I drew a winged person, though I went through a phase of this several years ago. This page feels much removed from those old drawings, though. Reminiscent, maybe, but I also feel vaguely reminiscent of the person who was doing the drawing. Does that make sense to anyone but me?

You seriously just wrote that? What are you, nine?

Okay, for starters I am just trying to be honest and real. All of these words are just a condensed version of where I am right now. Just as the old art journal is my image safe place, this is my exposed words safe place. I wonder if it will ever happen that I get so sick of your orangey ass that you just cease to be.

Also, what’s wrong with being nine? I’m not nine, having been born forty, but I see no reason to have a problem with anyone who is nine.

Anyway, wings or fins. In some way I have them. 

Alice

Have you ever had a great idea, made a little plan for it in your mind, and then just chewed it all to hell?

Poor Alice… You’ll have to forgive the navel gazing here (again) but it’s time. It’s time to let go of Alice. Now if I can only figure out how to do that…

Alice came from a dream I had several months ago. She came to me whole, with a back story and an immediate situation. I could see her, and as it sometimes happens with dreams, I could see through her eyes. I was so woven into this dream that when I woke up I felt lost.

I felt loss. Without going much further into the specifics of the dream, I will say that Alice was waiting for the ending. She knew it was coming, and wore a smile for it. Inside, she kicked at it and raged.

For several days after the dream, Alice’s story grew in my head. Maybe a short story, but no, more than that. A series of paintings. A series of small portraits. Alice at the window in her nightgown. Michael. Their companions in the house.

In my head I painted and wrote. I assembled shadowboxes full of hairbrushes and wristwatches. I imagined the sky that haunted Alice’s artist friends. I could see Alice’s ink bottle, and the stains on her hands.

There is more, but… I’m struggling with it.

What came of all of this? Not a lot.

I made one small painting. I sat this painting aside, picked it up now and again. I added things to it. I washed it over. I scribbled at it and scratched it. Nothing made it what I needed it to be.

Just last week, I decided that it was time to stop picking at this poor, overworked scrap of wood. So it hit me… It hit me very hard that this silly little painting represents a lot of things I’ve held on to, if only in the back of my mind, for most of my life.

See, Alice and I both know that it’s time to let go. Neither of us wants to, otherwise she would have been covered with gesso months ago. We have lived together for a lifetime. We stand at the window and look at the sky and know that the end has to come. We rage and cry, sitting quietly with a little smile on top of everything.

My first thought was to burn her, but I haven’t. I pick her up and run my hands over the wood and still wonder how to let her go.

Funny, the marks we make.