cobaltika

a happyAccident : precursor of images to come
(although i didn’t know at the time)

photoshop not included. really!

the tealHouse in the next block

has it already been a week since i last wrote here? so much for my good intentions of improved communications…unh. i should go back into the first page of my new journal for the year and scratch out half the shit i wrote there. my good intentions. so far, so bad! i haven’t even used it since then. that journal. yes. bad.

i am awake too early and in an odd mood. the wind is howling outside. i am glad to sit under my flannel duvet with fairy lights around me and write. first here. then in my tale - of which the first draft is almost finished. maybe i will finish it this morning. then there is much cleaning and glamorizing to be done (of the tale, not me). i have been consuming more fantastic and fairy-ish books lately, instead of my traditional diet of lady detective mysteries, etc. that could account for some of the oddness i am feeling (also the fact that it is my long solitary weekend and it has been VERY solitary.) but i need to read those books now if i am trying to include supernatural goings-on, i need to see how other people handle them. so far, it looks like i was doing fairly well, even in my blindness. so i will continue. but i need to not be shy about magical things. and just go for it.

last night i finished The Wood Wife and it was the first book in a very long time that i read slowly because i never ever wanted it to end. it also made me so nostalgic for the Southwest. i have been blocked artWise again and that is depressing. finally yesterday, there was sunshine and i could see at the artTable, so i worked on some new pieces. slowly. putting them away to dry each layer, so i couldn’t sit and judge them. then pulling them out, adding some more, hiding them again. it is tedious. art has never been so hard and i am losing all confidence lately. but i feel like i will die if i stop trying.

it is the restless time of the year. sure i am glad i will go see my family in Texas next month, but i long to go … elsewhere, too. that is the only thing i dislike about being poor now. the inability to travel. anyway. this sounds dreary. but i’m not depressed. just … odd.

kansas river : winter 2010 : cold

it was a good weekend. even though the weather was not sunny and certainly not as warm as we were led to believe. instead we have had several days of the most beautiful dense FOG. i LOVE fog. i love winter tree branches. but there is nothing like winter tree branches in FOG. so we went to see them. one day we went early to the Baker Wetlands, which was gorgeous and amazing. the ponds frozen, a dull yellow-white ice, everything soft and distant. another day, we walked in the morning to the Secret Pond, which i found last summer. i was afraid to walk around alone then, it was so brushy and i *think* there was a posted sign. but yesterday, i didn’t see a sign and of course the only brush was branches, not the snakey kind, so we explored bravely. my poet was quite surprised that he had always missed this place and i could show it to him! we saw a badger’s hole and many feathers from a red-shafted flicker, who had recently been sacrificed for a dinner. i thought it was something fake at first, because the feathers seemed to be painted with neon orange! then we jumped over the drainage pipes and trudged through knee-high snow and found our way to the still arctic river, walked there for a while. also, we ate good things and watched more movies than i want to admit to. it was shocking. most were on macBook theater, but we also went to see Daybreakers, too! our suburban movie theater in town SUCKS. the matinees are not a bargain, the seats are crummy and it always feels dirty and sticky. from now on we will only go out to the movies in his town, unless we go to Liberty Hall here.

now i am supposed to be doing laundry and working at the artTable all day, but … uh … it’s so cozy sitting and writing and playing pictures!

PS - and BLUEBIRDS! we also saw BLUEBIRDS! what wonder!

kansas river : winter 2010 : picnic, anyone?

the crow on the ice floe : behind the branches

so far this month everything is about winter and snow. now it melts and it is ugly. i want more white to come and purify it all. i don’t care about the inconvenience. really. i can’t believe this county requested disaster assistance for 8 inches of snow at Christmas time. and i think they got it. that is so ridiculous. shameful. i’ll bet anyone in Haiti would like to trade places with anyone in our county and their minor inconveniences due to a bit of snow. hmm? i haven’t lamented and posted links for Haiti assistance and i apologize if that is unkind and thoughtless. i have looked at the images though and it is very saddening. mother nature can be so cruel. but i can’t find a sense of outrage or injustice within me (except for the entities that use disaster for money-making, power-making and religious justice). natural disasters will just happen and cannot really be controlled. even by manMade things like shittily-built levees. the disasters that appall me are the human ones. the manMade disasters. especially the ones that bring about the ruin of the natural world and its inhabitants. and that is as political as i will get.

i have (finally) been reading Oryx And Crake this week (in preparation for Atwood’s latest novel, a continuation of sorts, which my poet has just read and recommends highly). it doesn’t even seem like “science fiction” to me. just a probable vision of the future. we are all so foolish.

today my poet will come back to visit for the weekend. it will probably be too mushy for hiking, but maybe we will anyway. it is warmish. i have sat in my flannel covers with the fairy lights around me for too long, writing and reading, and will not have time to go do laundry now. clean sheets for him? or clean hair and a hot lunch for him? hmm. lucky me to have such simple choices to make. such possibilities. such a … paradise.

i have really missed writing here. sure. i have been writing. LOTS. but not this, my personal documentation. it is easy to lose the habit. and sometimes it becomes dull, all the public navalGazing. maybe i needed a break? i am not sure if i will do this long writing on *this* journal, i might just keep this one for the visual and put the writing on my livejournal, where i have done it for so many years now. we’ll see … how this goes … if i even continue.

sometimes i don’t write here because i feel so boring. or pathetic (i’m tired of whinyWriting). or don’t have a relevant image or piece of artwork to show. isn’t that silly? how the visual has become such an important, almost required, aspect of online journaling? of course, it is nice, that visual contribution, but i don’t like the feeling that is required. so perhaps i will allow myself to be rebellious, to just get up and write, when i wake at 5am with a head full of words. if people are offended, well … move along. i know i do often enough, when i am not in the mood to read a long rambly post. i usually read though. i am such a voyeur.

as much as i love my visual people on my reading (”friends”) list, i have shyly added some more people - writing people. writing has become sort of a big deal to me and i have much curiosity about people who write. and i like to read lovely and interesting words.

i am growing used to the winter now, the icy lumps of snow and the glazed sidewalks. the frigid air in my lungs. in fact, i like it! this has been the most dramatic winter since i have lived here and it is quite fascinating. on Monday, my poet and i (yes! he came to visit ME!) walked along the river, since it was an astonishing 20 degrees - a heat wave. what has become of the river amazed me. i thought i might be in Iceland. yes, of course i made pictures, i always do, i could pop one in right … here … but … i don’t feel like it.

making pictures and wrestling with the artTable are still very important to me, but lately the writing has become very exciting. i haven’t talked about it, but i *did* continue what i began during nano-month. i have had some weeks of being stumped, not knowing where to go next, or how, or inspired at all. then i will have a week of words, where i wake up too early and have to write for an hour before going to the office, or if i don’t have to go to the office, all morning. yes, in bed, under the flannel duvet, in my nightgown! with coffee!

so the first draft of the thing is almost done. i am just trying to decide how to wind it up. i feel there will need to be written at the end “to be continued” because those people are going to have so much more fun and adventure. then i am going back to clean and embellish. i am hesitant about asking for a reader, although i do sort of want feedback. i did send the first big hunk to Betsy for a critical read, because i trust her, but she is very young and the major characters are middle-aged. i would like to have a middle-aged response, too. but it is hard not to feel protective about one’s work, especially on the internet. ideas are so easily absorbed, even unconsciously. i know the theme of supernatural relocation is not new, but what happens *after* that, with my people, is rather unusual and i want to guard it right now, i guess. so, after it is “finished”, i have no idea what to do next. i guess i’ll figure it out when i get there.

so i guess that is enough for now. it is an office day. i am so glad the holidays are gone.

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so far it has been a really crazy winter in Kansas. the bit Margaret read me in the Farmer’s Almanac, about this coming winter, has been quite true so far - much colder and much wetter. last weekend, i went to visit my poet and it snowed yet again. still the streets there (and here!) aren’t cleared from the heavy Christmas snows. i thought it was gorgeous and we had a cabin fever that even Avatar 3D didn’t cure, so i begged to go drive into the West Bottoms to make pictures. my poet declared it was far too cold to walk around and i had to agree, even though i *really* wanted to. 5 degrees and deep snow could get dangerous! and i hated to think of tinaMerlot becoming trapped in deep snow or ice. so he kindly drove me around so i could do some drive-by shooting. everything looked so ancient and wonderful.

and now it is snowing again! lots! it is truly beautiful. but with an expected wind chill of -20 tomorrow, i hope they close campus so i don’t have to go out so early!

click for bigger, if so desired!

normally i think resolutions are hogwash. lately i’ve even thought visualizations are hogwash. bad. i know. if you can’t see it, how can it happen? but i have been practicing “living in the Present” and i think i got a little carried away?

this year, i am making a new visual journal and i decided to start it out with some intentions for the new year. and then make them public. like putting it all out there. sure, it is not about getting stuff, but maybe a reinforcement of some things i would like to be more conscious of? i admit that i have become sloppy about so many things.

so, even though i am alone this holiday, i am having a fine time! (even though i almost shook up the champagne bottle instead of the vitaJuice bottle a few minutes ago!)

i wish a wondrous new year for all of us!!!