Post 47 of 92

Sky is just beginning to lighten.  It's not that early but we're still on daylight saving which makes 6:30 look like 4:30.  There's a push to change back March 1 rather than Easter.  I heartily agree.

Have been writing and painting and reading and practicing guitar and yoga-ing in addition to the usual stuff. Had a pretty bad day last week.  Not sleeping, overly sensitive, depressed but other thatnthat 2 day blip I'm staying afloat pretty well.  What else is there to do?  The deterioration in Richard seems to be more pronounced or happening faster than before.  He was doing the dishes (I cook, he washes up) without water in the sink.  His verbal skills often fail and we spend more time than usual uncovering what he wants to say.  Sometimes he can just show me.  Have made a dentist appointment for next week as his teeth are in a dire need of a clean.  He brushes them twice a day but I didn't know he wasn't brushing them well.  The Parkinsons interferes with manual dexterity so that he isn't getting the brush around his teeth as he should.  Which accounts for his terrible breath.  Maybe that will help.  That and getting him on an electric toothbrush. 

Dental hygiene isn't the sort of thing I considered would be an issue. 

But we're ok. 

Was pushed and cajoled and asked to apply for Art Post Uki, which I did - and was knocked back.  S in a terrible position as she had to tell me when she was the one who nagged, and I mean nagged, in the nicest sort of way, to apply.  Now I have been asked to re-apply.  But I won't.  All my adult life I have sketched and drawn for my own pleasure.  Last year I sold a few pieces, before that I'd given some away, bartered some, had one in a raffle - but there was never any pressure to please any one other than myself.  So I was happy.  Of course some days (many days) I couldn't draw worth crap or was bereft of ideas or just generally uninspired, so although I could be frustrated about my work, I was never sad.  Creating art never made me sad. 

When I was refused I was sad.  Thin skinned, ego deflated, too proud, yes all those things but also really sad.  Someone had a say about my work that meant something.  One auditor liked it, another didn't (awkward composition, doesn't know anatomy).  I've always created stuff for me.  If another liked it, or loved it, wonderful, but it was always for me.  Now I'd let someone else's opinion matter.

So I've made a decision.  No more.  I'll show in the locals, I've got 2 in a raffle next month, but I will never put myself in a position where I'm chasing 'success'.  I was told if I had a 'theme' or made this item my signature in every work or told a story....  This is a different version but the same thing Mal Camin said to me 40 years ago, 'if you change your colour palette your work will sell' and he'd sold out to Worth Avenue and Martha's Vineyard to do family portraits of the wealthy.  He was a talented artist but he was sad.

breathing back and gratitude

Read a couple of days ago, or rather reread, about the importance of gratitude.  I am grateful and express it every day but suspect REAL gratitude arises on each and every breath during every waking moment.  For when you think about it, that's just it, isn't it?  As I read somewhere else recently, "Thank you Universe for another ordinary day."  But if one actually Sees each moment, there is nothing ordinary about it.  Each moment is a miracle; grass growing, coffee steaming, breathing, cats sleeping, air against skin, thoughts, senses, breathing breathing breathing.

So with this sense of the world being softly supported in its orbit and all things on it as they should be (despite appearances), Richard and Helen found a candidate for our new home yesterday at Burringbar.  Even Richard was pleased and that's saying something.  If Helen likes it I'm sure I will too.  Have always liked the photos although it wasn't one of my favourite saves.  Beyond that I have a lame horse (Pagan, offside hind, no obvious sign of injury) and I've done my back again - this time by the strenous activity of sweeping up broken bits of soapstone from Kwan Yin's halo. 

I spent fifteen minutes on the couch wondering how I was going to get up.  What started as a little tweak morphed into a major spasm so painful I couldn't take a deep breath.  Thought about calling Richard to come home but of course, if I could make it to the phone then I could make it.  Worst episode yet.  Don't know why I get these things.  It's not spine it's muscle.  Today it's much better although I'm moving very carefully and with forethought.  No sudden moves.  Will try yoga but a modified version. 

Looking at art work on line, especially the quite creepy Laurie Lipton.  Quite creepy but quite brilliant.  Started doodling a bit yesterday but don't really have any idea of what I'll do.  Just want to DO something.  An itch that needs to be scratched.  Practice drawing, while valuable, doesn't satisfy nearly as much - rather like drinking decaffeinated when looking for that caffeine hit.  I want to be absorbed into the work. 

Post Parting Regression

It would take at least a week of solitude to fall into myself again.  But I only have until Monday.  Today is Saturday. 

When did I lose the ability to think, to follow a thought thread to a conclusion or at least an opinion?  I think in thought bytes.  Nothing more substantial than a quick acknowledgement of 'Oh, that might be important!' before moving on to the next ephemera.  I'm one of those multi-taskers that multi-task themselves right out of the ability to stop and think.  I equate busyness with meaning when busyness is keeping idle hands and idle minds occupied so I don't have to confront the emptiness and fear and shame which knocks at my idle mind. 

And I'm so damned hard on myself.  I'm going on 60 and I'm still flogging myself daily for not having a perfect body.  Isn't that nuts?  When will I let all that crap go?  I exercise 2 hours a day (1 hour yoga, 1 hour walking) and enjoy the benefits of health and flexibility yet what I really want is physical perfection. 

It is breathtakingly sad.

Yesterday I dug out my huge art book in which I've stored all my loose drawings, paintings and sketches that aren't framed and hanging on the walls (the grandkids counted 51 pictures on the wall, most of which is my stuff).   Anyway, I was surprised and pleased by the amount and variety and yes, talent displayed in these works.  Not all were good, some were, many more weren't, but they were mine, they were individual and creative.  And numerous!  I have a serious body of work developing.  Won't matter one whit after I'm gone.  I'm no Grandma Moses, discovered and made famous in her dotage.  (But I'm vain enough to want to be).  The importance is in the doing.  I've always said that.  But do I believe it?

Or is my real worth to be measured in my ability to be unselfish and care for Richard?  I blame him for part of my inability to settle.  I listen now.  Since he fainted all those months ago and was carted off to hospital in an ambulance, I listen.  Part of me has become a sentinel, watching for the Enemy.  Of course it's not his fault and he doesn't know that part of me is always at attention. 

So while he is away for a few days I try and discover myself again.  Try and quit flicking between windows (just read about Clementine Hunter, a poor cotton picking black woman from Louisiana who taught herself to paint), try and be a bit more forgiving of myself for my imperfections. 

And try and start another painting before he gets home.  Drawing is more calming than meditation.  I find like repetitive detail, something to lose myself in.  Something to fall into while I'm alone.
 

Richard returns today after 2 days on the coast.  He's catching up with Helen and his old mentor, Heather.  Have asked him to 'inhale' the coast, to hold the image of the sea as a goal so that we stride ever closer to The Move.  Have a picture of our house from the ad in the newspaper stuck to the fridge.  Have printed across it in bold black letters SOLD as a kind of sympathetic magic or a metaphysical attempt to rearrange the vibrations to match the dream. 

The burning has already begun.  Neighbours on either side have burnt some of their hills.  But there's so much more to burn and the season is young.  I don't want to be here while they do for I can't pretend or distance myself from the destruction and death. And it gets harder each year.

Every morning around 6:30 a commercial jet flies overhead.  It's trajectory is Coolangatta.  Every morning I stop what I'm doing and watch it pass, the sun gilding the fuselage and wings.  The sun from over the ocean.  The sun which glows on Byron and Cabarita.  The sun that the Tweed Valley birds sing into being.  Our sun.  When I see it I'm there, in that ancient green caldera, in our house with a view of Mt. Warning, with the smell of the sea on the breeze and the gurgle of water from all those rivers and streams sliding along my bones. 

I do try and be patient, really I do.  The right time and all that.  I know it will be the right time but I devoutly wish that right time comes soon.  Every time I ride or walk the dogs or even go outside I see the beauty and the magic of this place.  It isn't the place that repels me but what is done to it.  Our neighbours have sold their 100+ acres to the son of our neighbour.  Much of it is bush.  I suspect the son will follow the father and slash and burn the bush to make it suitable for cattle.  I ride that country all the time.  I'm not sure if I could stand to see it destroyed. 

But you attract what you fear, whatever you hold in your head.  The more I fear the destruction and the burning the more I make it real. 

Ah, the guilt.  It seems guilt is my second skin.  Haven't been able to do yoga for 2 days because I've done something to my back.  And it's hard work not to feel guilty about it.  Really. 

But one good thing.  Am working on a coloured pencil drawing, of the back of Camus' head (again, he's already immortalized in a pencil drawing) as he gazes into a weird blue forest with a flying black cat high above.  Sounds weird and I did despair that it would work but it's starting to come together.  I really like it.  Shouldn't say that about one's own work I suppose but as I make things that I like it would be foolish not to like them. 

Am thinking about taking a drawing/colouring class starting this month.  Need to talk it over with Richard.  It's every Tuesday for 8 weeks.  Will see. 

Reading the most incredible book about the most incredible woman, Nancy Wake, the famous White Mouse and thorn in the side of the French Gestapo.  It's a biography by Peter Fitzsimons (and what a delightful writer he is too;  clear, cogent, with a sparkling sense of humour as well as the ability to impart the portentousness and almost tragedy of Hitler's attempt to impose Nazism on the world).  But there is Nancy, armed with her Anne of Green Gables philosophy, Australian disdain for authority, courage, humour and toughness as a light within the war clouds over France.

How quickly we forget how close we were to losing.  How quickly we forget how lucky we are to live in freedom.  How quickly we dismiss the burgeoning threats to our freedom  from fundamentalist Christian to fundamentalist Islamists.    Christian, you say?  Absolutely.  Although they might not be throwing bombs or shooting people their aim is the same:  to make everyone think and behave as they do.  Creationism over science, the nuclear heterosexual family with a man at its head, all that nonsense that should've been done away with years ago.  Thought police under the cover of love of Jesus.  Phooey!

And then there is the far more frightening Sharia Law under which ultraconservative Moslems want the world to live.  That is so much in the daily news I don't have to go into detail about the treatment of women. 

Do we still make people like Nancy Wake.  What would I have done under similar circumstances.  I fear I am a coward and would not have acquitted myself well.  I hope never to find out. 

Haven't finished the book yet.  Was devouring it too quickly so have made myself quit reading and do other things.

Like get another sheet of paper ready for drawing.  Finally finished the naked woman with the bird on her head, framed it and hung it on the wall.  Have no idea what it means but it was an interesting exercise in foreshortening and having the human figure lit from below.  I am not well pleased with it but it's okay.  I can live with it for awhile although as it has a nude I'll probably take it down should we ever get prospective buyers in to look at the house.

On the market a month and not one bite.  Emailed the realtor asking could we have a for sale sign in front.  Took them two weeks to list the property on realestate.com  and no for sale sign after a month.  When the contract finishes in May we will go elsewhere. 

Cat Boundaries and an Art Habit

I've been mean and closed the door on Natalia. Natalia the Love Biter. The biter of elbows and chin and arm and nose. A purring chainsaw of pain. Natalia of needle sharp claws into my pillow thighs looking for a comfortable position. Natalia the Scamp. Sometimes I just have to say no to the cats. I am not the Chinese Emperor who cut off his sleeve rather than disturb his sleeping companion. No, I pick them up and move them out of the way. I encourage Nairobi to sit beside rather than on me because she makes my legs look like pages of Braille. When Matisse sleeps between the crook of my knee I have no compunction in rolling him to the outside. He weighs a lot. Having Matisse sit on my legs is like being weighed down by a furry boulder.

It has been raining steadily since last night. Although the cats are totally indoor cats, I suspect they get cabin fever when the rain brings the outside inside as a green gloom. I can almost hear them say, 'I'm bored!' Natalia doesn't usually notice whether I'm on the computer or not. She may come in and check out the bird tv through the window or hunt a wild fly on the pane, but sit on my lap? No, she's too busy. But this morning, my lap was a prize to be won despite gentle discouragement. Frankly, if she quickly found a position and went to sleep, no problem but being a rather large cat, she had to twist and turn and try this position and then that, digging claws in to steady herself. I removed her three times. She was like the boor at a party who just doesn't get it that you don't want to hear the fine details of his trip to the dentist. I put her out and shut the door.

Have finished, signed and framed the latest drawing. It's not pretty. It's not logical. But it has presence. It is pencil. A man's bald but beautifully formed head stares through his cupped binocular hands but the hands are joined at the elbow forming a sort of heart shape. Another pair of hands, striped and joined at the wrist form the bottom of the drawing. Massive shadowy shoulders frame the binocular hands. I should (oh, there's that word!) take a photo and try and get it up here but as I've used the word 'should' of course I won't. If I wanted to market my work I'd do so. It's still the work for it's own sake. These walls don't need any more pictures (although I've always admired the shot of Gertrude Stein's Paris salon which was hung with art from ceiling - and high ceilings at that - to floor) but when there's something on the board I breathe more easily. So I keep working.

Have started another work, coloured pencil. One day I sat in the chaise lounge under the poinciana tree and looked up. The sun coming through the branches, the green leaves and the orange-red blooms was a vision that I can never replicate. Yet I have to try. It's odd that artists know they can never truly recreate nature but are compelled to attempt it again and again and again. How frustrating to see the result of hours of work and know that it bears little resemblance to that golden kernel of joy that inspired its creation in the first place. When I looked up through the branches and saw the sky/tree/blossom/sunlight vision, I knew I would have to try. I'm not a plein air painter. I won't take the pad outside and try and copy what I see. I will try (and how impossible and at the same time laughable this is) to recreate the feeling it gave me when I first saw it. What else can I do?

I have copied many things; drawn people from life, copied images from photos, but the paintings which give the most satisfaction are the ones that come from my head. I read of artists who project a photoshopped image onto the canvas and then paint it in. That wouldn't work for me. In one sense it would seem like cheating, a paint by numbers exercise for adults. Trying to recreate the inner life is what interests me, even if it's only my interpretation of an image I've seen and then scrambled with memory and emotion.

More Art and a Dying Moth

Fickle creature. Am on to the next Big Thing. At least I am eternally optimistic that my next attempt at drawing will be better than the last. Finished the Parrot Looming Over Woman Dreaming in Red Armchair painting/drawing (is it a painting if paint is not used? This last is a combination of oil/chalk pastel, coloured and graphite pencil). Dropped the finished work into the somewhat bulging art folder along with all the other rejected unframed projects. Have given up on getting anything framed. Buy all these cheap frames with glass at the op shops then leap into a new drawing without measuring first to fit (in case it turns out okay). When I am at my most egotistical (and my most delirious) I have a vision that I'll be *discovered* after my death. Like a modern age Grandma Moses...yet I allow none of the grandkids to call me grandma (whole other post on this, by naming we define, by naming we make real. I will not be named Grandma. Vain, yes. Do I care? No).

So this next drawing was just an exercise to get down an idea I had for a larger piece. But I liked it so much that I've kept going. It's different enough from what I hope to do as a larger work that I won't feel I'm repeating myself. Have much admiration for artists who will do the same painting half a dozen times in an effort to get it right. Admiration that falls short of emulation. Just had a thought tho - stemming from yoga practice. I do the same routine (takes about an hour and 20 minutes) every day. Why does it not bore me? Because each time I am in the moment which is eternal and eternally different. It must follow that if I drew, for example, a brass vase every day for a year, those 365 drawings would be different because I would be different. And perhaps if I did draw that vase 365 times I would discover that it was not boring. One of those great many questions I'll never have an answer to.

There's a moth clinging to the screen in the loo. It's brown and tan, rather bland and nondescript, about the size of a 20 cent piece. I wouldn't have noticed it, as one ignores bland brown moths, except I was sitting there and it was clinging there. Then I saw its translucent wings were somewhat ratty with crenellated edges and of its six legs I could only count two. So this moth is on its way out. What goes on behind those dark unfathomable eyes? Is it aware that it's dying or does it only know great tiredness? Has it bred and therefore will live on in its descendants? Does it drink from the showy cactus flowers which bloom nightly and daily die? What adventures has it experienced under the black eternity of stars while we sit cocooned inside a wooden box mesmerized by a flickering blue glow? The wings have lost most of their *dust*. It has flown...miles? Following the pheronomes of a female or trailing scent like an insect Salome? Dodging predators, guided by what mysterious filaments of knowing that we, with our heavy corporeal intelligence, cannot even imagine. The Night is another dimension, another world. And this moth, holding with one leg to the dusty screen of a country house toilet, the day light shining through its dull brown wings, noticed by one small woman from a crowd of 7 billion, what of it. What of it, indeed?

There is a soft bleating sound outside. It is dark. The bleat is a muffled staccato amongst the mating calls of frogs and cane toads. The amphibians are happy. We've had another flooding day. The creek, which has not stopped, broke its banks again and washed over the paddocks. We haven't even been down the back to check. R panicked a little and moved the cars to a neighbour's house. Of course it didn't come to that. Still, the peach paddock was completely underwater and when we did take the cars to the neighbour she had a river coursing beneath her house. I rode the bike up the road this evening as the rains have passed and everywhere is a sibilant murmur. The roads shimmer beneath a patina of water, the verges gurgle, the ditches guffaw. I have never seen water like this in all the time we've lived here. R is sick of it - and so was I for a day or two but, like a demented pendulum, I have swung back the other way. I found I remembered the drought too well, the promises made that I would never be sick of rain if and when it came. Give me rain any time over drought - even if the road, which the council has just repaired, has washed away again - in the same place. No doubt, there will be another cave in at Jackson's Yards. Can't see for myself for the causeways are impassable until the water subsides. But that will only take a couple of days. At least this time we have the phone. We lost it for over a week and as we have no mobile reception here R was feeling the loss. Not me. I hate phones and would happily never answer another.

The preceding paragraph was written days ago. It was as far as I got. Have been very slack about writing here even though I think of it often. Very slack in many ways.

But not with art. After finishing the previous drawing, and so scared that I would not have another idea and would be straining for days to give birth to some stilted over-wrought and ultimately worthless idea I found instead, to my great surprise and delight, that another idea bubbled up almost immediately. There is no greater pleasure than having something on the go. White spaces, whether it's a canvas, a drawing paper or a virginal manuscript is one the of the most disheartening prospects one can face. The idea came so quickly and went so well that for all intents of purposes I finished it yesterday. I'll live with it for awhile before the final cut but basically it is done. And I really like it. I love the concept. It is a drawing of a woman smelling/kissing a cat's head, much like I do Matisse. He doesn't like it if I try and kiss him from the front. Maybe that big face looming in is just too much of a good thing, but he always sits still when I kiss him between the ears from behind, so that both of us are facing forward. And of course, when he is kissed like that I get to inhale his lovely cat aroma. So that's what I drew but what makes the picture is that the cat is part of the woman. The cat's eyes line up where her mouth would be, the 'M' on his forehead, makes the dip above the lip (there's a word for it which I can never remember). Had to make the pupils horizontal rather than vertical but that works too.

Now, of course, I am bereft of any idea whatsoever for another drawing. Just have to trust that something will bubble to the surface. I notice that I am looking at 'things' differently, seeing them with, dare I say, an artist's eye? Everything is, I know, stored away for future reference. I suppose I am just looking more consciously. Some of the best images are those in which I can't even tell what I'm looking at. Television, surprisingly, is a good medium for creativity. I am often looking, not at the characters, but at the background of whatever is on the screen. There is artwork on television that isn't featured as art - it is in the pictures shown on the wall of houses, in sculptures, in landscapes and costumes. As I said before, sometimes I see something and my mind can't interpret it, can't label it, yet is is beautiful as a collection of colours and shapes and lights and darks.

So I must trust that this 'feeding' of the creative well will foster a new idea when it is again faced with that dreaded blank page.

I think I'm finally getting into a rhythm. A retirement rhythm. Unfortunately although I like being spontaneous I function best with a routine, albeit a loose one. Perhaps I'm not the only one that, if I have an hour to do a, b and c will have no trouble accomplishing same, but if I have an entire day to do a, b, and c, I may not even get through a. Getting up early helps. Fell into bed at 9:30 so got up at 5:30. Took the dogs for a walk (before the heat) and have already done the yoga hour too - and it's only 10:40. Haven't cleaned the house yet but that's something that can be done even in the afternoon if need be. Or commercial breaks if I'm watching the midday movie and drawing, which is something I like to do. Unfortunately I'm not a purist and don't close myself away in the studio with classical music and a vision. I"m propped on the couch with a drawing board, a coffee and the tv. If it's a good movie, I'll watch more than I'll draw but if it's a bad movie I'll draw more than I watch. I've got the end tables to hold drawing materials, the aforementioned coffee and two good lamps. R bought me this lamp a year or so ago which is a good light for drawing by - no heat either.

The studio as such (computer room cum studio) is too small and stuffy. I can't get far enough away from my work to see it properly. And it's claustrophobic in that to get the light I have to face the wall. Here at the computer I'm facing the bank of windows and don't feel shut in.

Anyway, this is just a thank you entry really. I am very happy with my life. Contented. Perhaps it won't last but while it is it is appreciated.

(Not to say nightmares don't lurk in the undergrowth - dreamed R left me and was so despairing I woke up).

I suspect, with hope and optimism!, that consistency is making a tiny impact on meditation. Some days are just horrible and then today, all huge 11 minutes of it, there was a moment, half a breath, when I was brushed by a quiet and peace that was deeper and felt like a glimpse of what meditation may be all about. Reading an article in Australia Yoga about making a groove in your mind that deepens with practice so that it is easier to go there with each session. That made sense.

It's starting to rain again, no thunder at least. Tadpoles are in every standing body of water. Most of them will have the opportunity to turn into frogs. Many seasons eggs are laid, tadpoles form and then they die because the waterholes dry up. We have a chorus of frogs in the fernery off the bedroom. They are so loud you think you'll never get to sleep yet in some strange way they are soothing and I drift off listening to the chorus. I don't know how they do it but they'll sing in unison and then, on some hidden signal, stop. No one keeps singing, no one voice croaks on for half a note. It's as though a radio was switched off. Starting up again isn't as all-encompassing. One frog will make that initial, somewhat tremulous, croak and then it's on, wave after wave of sound.

Bad storms around us again. Harrisville and Ipswich are getting flogged. The horses are galloping past the window. Drifter bucked, which for a lazy horse is quite an accomplishment, but they are only feeling the cold rain. There is blue sky behind, no hail although I'd wager, from the look on the radar, that some places are getting hail. Yesterday there was hail as large as cricket balls plus damaging winds. We're very lucky to get a few more mls of rain without the damage. It's odd to watch the radar because there's something about the topography which causes a long line of storms to split just as they come over us. Perhaps it's the hilly country to the southwest through Heifer Creek which causes the bifurcation - now there's a word! Anyway, we get a heavy shower which cools and refreshes and which will make my afternoon bike ride very pleasant.

Walked sans dogs yesterday afternoon. It was too hot, 33 degrees and high humidity. Not worth the risk (took them at 7:30 this morning which will have to be the routine through summer if they are to get a long walk). Anyway, I was trying to be mindful. Walk with mindfulness, feel each step, listen to the insects, the sound of moving water, the birds, trying to sense the larger ancient trees as I walked past (a doomed effort but I think there is benefit in the trying as one has to listen so hard and with more than just one's ears). Then it occurred to me that walking outside on this country road is rather like exploring the virtual reality of second life. When I go to a new destination and 'walk' I am looking all around me, listening to the sounds the programmer has installed, taking note of the terrain, the flora and fauna (if any), all the things the creator has decided to decorate his virtual location with. Just like reality. There I am, my feet crunching on the gravel and my head pointing toward infinity as I traverse this sphere rife with sights, smells, sounds and sensations. But this reality isn't real any more than secondlife is real. Perhaps it's a bit more real in that SL is derived from it but it's still an illusion. It was a gentle and gently odd place for my mind to be and was helpful in keeping me mindful.

Not so this morning with the dogs. Dogs are so much of the world and so enthusiastic about everything they see, smell and hear. I just have to be there with them and discourage too much enthusiasm as well as sluice them down with water from the still running creek to cool them. Yes, even this morning. We were all wrung out when we returned.

It was so hot and sticky yesterday that I didn't work on the drawing. Went grocery shopping and found a couple of silver xmas baubles to use as mirror balls. (Just spent five minutes trying to figure out how to print a copy of Escher's drawing of his hand holding a mirror ball. Hasn't got a great deal of detail but at least it's a little larger than the small photo I have in the book of his work). Anyway, even though I didn't work on the drawing I kept looking at it, propped up against the woodheater, and seeing it almost as dessert. There's no nicer feeling than having a work in progress.

Had another look at the radar and there's a second stream of storms coming. These will miss us as well as, like the others, they are passing to the NW of us. Wouldn't have minded a little bit more rain but shouldn't complain as this place is absolutely perfect now. It really is a bit of paradise.

Released Reginald, the rainbow lorikeet that came in to work with nothing wrong but a bad case of 'swimmers' in his poo. He's been on medication since he came and had recovered sufficiently to be returned to freedom. It seemed a good time to do it as there are two juveniles hanging around. Mom and Dad did their job and nicked off a couple of days ago. Figured the juveniles wouldn't be so stringent about not allowing new members to their group, plus there would be two extra sets of eyes looking for danger. When he first flew out the door I thought he couldn't fly well enough but he soon gained height and flew to the wattles bordering the peach and dam paddocks. Today he's been hanging around with the others. The food I put out for him has been eaten so even though I haven't actually seen him eat it I suspect he's the only one who would recognise a coop cup. He's flying much more strongly today so I'm hoping all will be well.

Unlike with little Jack the Rainbow Lorikeet of P and G's. Jack was surrendered to the surgery because he was a biter. P&G took him, put him in an aviary and his personality underwent a complete change. He went from Mr. Aggression to Mr. Sook. He fell in love with Peter and went everywhere with him, murmuring sweet nothings into his beard, riding on his shoulder or the steering wheel of the truck, helping with feeding the horses or general chores around the place. He even got on with P's other love interest, Charlie Bob the cockatoo. One would perch on one shoulder, the other on the other. Then I got an email from P. He heard a squawk and went outside in time to see a falcon fly off with Jack. Jack's last words were 'OK Mate'. We are all heartbroken. I feel terrible so can only imagine how gutted P and G are.

And why, of all the words and phrases that Jack knew did he say OK Mate? Was it acceptance of his fate, of death? Why not hello or what are you doin'? Like P said, at least it was quick. Little consolation though.

Started a new drawing, a nude this time. Couldn't work on it last night because we were inundated with flying termites. Light attracted them and as it was hot and humid and my skin was sticky it was annoying and uncomfortable to have a light on. Miserable night, actually. So couldn't work on the drawing.

Rained hard all day today, well over an inch already and the creek is down once again (yippee!). But rather than work on the drawing I explored a virtual world after seeing a documentary on them. Second life. No news to most people I suppose but news to me. Downloaded the software and joined and then proceeded to run into every tree, wall and solid object possible - or *fly* into the sea, fly up into ceilings, overfly, underfly, overwalk, underwalk - damn hard to walk around places. Tried to go to certain landmarks, failed, tried to find art inspired spots, failed until found one which was beautifully done with flowers and birds and rabbits, kittens, crashing waves and idyllic waterfalls and pillow filled pavilions and a bathtub and oh, what's this? A naked lady floating onto a wicker bed, oops I might just take my accident prone avatar self and go elsewhere. Then I met the designer of the place. Very inspired but very airy fairy; muse and all that and may peace be with you and no I can't use it as my landmark home space because I'd have to join a group and I was afraid to ask what that group was. Was it not a place of peace and tranquility but a rendezvous for cybersex? She was provocatively dressed in a split-sided blue tunic with longer than long legs and breasts out to here and blonde Rastafarian locks and she kept twirling one leg around the other and all I wanted to do was get out of there and stop making polite conversation. So I did.

But it IS addictive. Got in there to look at artwork - and found some great stuff created by a university (Texas). Really good stuff. Was it all created on the computer or was it painted and then transferred. Really original stuff. So it's worth exploring but there is a big accent on buying things; land and just 'stuff' which doesn't interest me. If I can't view it, explore it for free than I'm not interested.

At the way station for beginners I could hear conversations between other avatars. Not very enlightening. Was really out of my depth age wise there. My first contact was with a spanish speaking gentleman which was nice except I wanted to explore and learn how to operate so I bid him a polite good-bye. Not that I'm any better at it now but I did copy down some instructions. Must be careful. Let me repeat that, must be careful. It could suck me in to the detriment of real life if I let it.

Big day for Dimitri. As it was raining and I'd read that it was easier to introduce birds to bathing when it was raining thought I'd give it a try. I also read that for shy birds it often helped to hide the bottle in your shirt. So I did. Went out there with the bottle set on fine mist and wrapped in my shirt. He was initially hesitant but I was so happy to see he didn't panic that I kept praising him in a very very happy voice. As it was mist it was difficult to saturate him but he did fluff his feathers and raise his one wing. He preened for a long time afterward. I'm encouraged to try again when it's raining, maybe even have the setting on slightly harder than mist. It's been well over a year since he's had a bath. Bet he felt wonderful.

Night Cat Dreaming

Finished it. Slotted it into the big black folder where all unframed art is kept. R was supposed to take the frame into town to get glass measured but forgot. Have to paint it anyway. One of the downsides of buying used frames can be the colour scheme. This one is streaked yellow and blue in a failed attempt, perhaps, to make it look antique. Not that I'll be improving it much. Going to use a test paint pot of lavendar. Guess one of the benefits of using varying shades of black and grey is it goes with everything.

Now trying to come up with an idea for the next drawing. Done some idle thumbnail sketches but no joy. Am also looking through myth and mythology books, rediscovered John Duncan painting in the style of the pre-Raphaelites. Love the mysticism, the mystery and the jeweled beauty of his work. Should I copy? For practice? Part of me knows I should for I'll learn alot by copying such an artist but another part of me rebels at doing anything that is not my own.

Feel a bit crappy and uninspired today. Too little sleep contributes. Went to bed at midnight after watching a documentary on Lennon vs the USA. Then awakened by one of the birds having a night fright. Still have to get up early for the birds however.
Anyway health, rather ill health talk is boring.

Looking for a road bike to buy. Not going to the gym any more. Since I stopped going my neck and shoulders feel much better. Probably due to yoga but not motivated to spend 40 minutes driving so that I can work out when walking the dogs takes place in a beautiful setting. I am very grateful for our dirt road, The other day I saw a dingo crossing the road in front of us. The whippets seemed to know this was not a domesticated dog for although they were interested and on their toes they didn't spin on the end of the lead like they, well Radar, does when he sees a neighbour's dog.

A few days ago I heard this wet metallic wheezy screech, which is the best description I can come up with for the warning call of a pheasant coucal. Up the side of the hill in low scrub a largish hawk, too far away for me to identify, was flying from bush to bush dodging mobbing crows, magpies and willie wagtails. We weren't close but it didn't seem as though it had anything in its mouth. In hindsight I wonder if in fact the hawk was in trouble and couldn't fly well enough to gain height.

The creek came down a few days ago after a heavy deluge. R and I took the dogs for a walk and at one of the causeways saw a fish, about 3 inches long. Looked like one of those rainbow fish which are native to Queensland. But how did it get there? Dry Creek is aptly named. If we're lucky it comes down two or three times a year and usually stops flowing within a day. With all the rain recently it ran for about 4 days but still, a fish? The creek is stony dusty dry. All the water holes dry up. When we moved here 19 years ago the water hole at the eastern edge of our property had quite a few small fish in it. We didn't know enough to be amazed assuming the creek (that was the last year we had a normal season according to the locals) ran all the time. So the fish mystery remains. Still I like that I can't explain it.

Have subscribed to an RSS feed from Leo Babauta called Zen Habits. He has a Short and Powerful Guide to Finding Your Passion which I've started by listing my likes and desires and talents. Then comes the next bit; researching those who are successful - it comes down to Art of course. Do I really want to get out there and hawk my wares? I don't need to make a living but if I want my ego stroked and have people like my work, they have to see it.

One of the most important parts of drawing, in my limited experience, is not drawing. The creative process benefits as much from a certain lassitude of the critical process as it does from putting pen, brush or pencil to paper.

My drawings are clipped to an art board and in summer, when the wood heater isn't burning, the board leans up against the heater where I can see it from the couch. I may think a drawing is nearing completion and the drawing will be sitting there looking more or less finished and then suddenly, a day or two later, I'll see either something that needs more work or a shadow or squiggle will suggest another direction I can take it. This is happening with The Night Cat. In the textured background was a shadow which suggested a sort of hill and when I looked harder it seemed to fit in and enrich what was already there. Therefore today, yet another rainy day, I've spent making that shadow view into something significant. While I was working it was obvious other areas needed more definition; darkening or lightening, more detail here, less detail there. I'm really starting to like it now. The downside is it happens with already completed work. It will be hanging there (work that I've liked well enough to frame) and then I'll see either a glaring error or something extra I've could have done with it.

Sometimes I think, no, I know, the awake mind needs to be quiet so that I can hear the creative mind. Monkey mind, that chattering jittering anxious self-condemning mind has the top spot in my little cranium. There is very little time when it isn't yammering away like a thousand air bubbles in a bottle of cheap fruit flavoured soda. Sometimes it's still during attempts at meditation, sometimes during yoga, always just before sleep when I'm so not there that I'm not productively aware of it. How to make use of the creative silence while still being with it enough to make use of what floats to the surface.

Recently read about an artist, sorry I don't know who - I was going through a whole list of artists and looking at their work - who used a technique of staring at a picture for 30 seconds and then meditating upon it for 30 minutes. Good grief, what discipline! I can hardly rein in my mind long enough to continually focus on 20 breaths without swanning off to some five and dime store of superficial thoughts. Read somewhere else (yoga magazine?) where some study found that 42% of our waking life is spent daydreaming but rather than the daydreaming being of happy thoughts and happy places it tended to make us sad and depressed. I'm there!

And one other thing occurs to me. Watched an Oprah show a while back in which the subject of overeating was the subject. Rather than focus on a diet the learned guest spoke of how compulsive eating (or in my case compulsive Mah Jong or Spider Solitaire playing) was a way to avoid having to confront some aspect of ourselves. Hear Hear! I don't think I've got some deep dark kernel of unexamined trauma that I need to examine but the game playing is a sort of drug which keeps the mind from thinking. It dulls me. Why I desire that I don't know. Why is there a need to escape from reality? My reality is quite good; companionship, love, food, shelter, an entrance to the entire world through books and the 'net - why then? Is it a form of simple procrastination so that I don't have to do anything serious? To live up to the great blessing of being alive. I mean, how miraculous is that simple fact? Life. Being alive. All the billions who have gone before me, Living breathing. Then their life stops. And their breathing stops. Stops. That's it. The End. FINIS! Now it's my turn. No wonder I get so cranky with myself; guilt compounding guilt. What a privilege to be alive and I waste time (and I'm 55 years old, damn it!) playing stupid computer games.

Enough rant. I've drawn. It's been a good day. And I think I forgive myself for not being perfect and creating non-stop for all my waking hours.

I'm retired. Officially retired with the cake and parting gifts and everything. I think it must be like going on holiday; it takes a week before you finally believe you're on holiday and then you have that final week to enjoy before returning to work. Retirement hasn't felt real yet. But I'm trying. It's been raining so much that there is little I can do outside, didn't even take the dogs for a walk yesterday. There's a part of me that rebels and doesn't want to start spring cleaning just because I've retired. Have read a couple of books, well almost finished with the second one, and have worked on the drawing.

The drawing. I'm going to call it The Night Cat. It's an outline of a cat leaping. It's 'framed' by a leopard pattern frame surrounded by surrealist trees in a night sky. The background of the cat is a patterned space partially filled by a knobbly somewhat surrealist tree. Naturally I don't know what it signifies, if anything. (There is a rather soggy looking kookaburra sitting on the hills hoist. Foraging for all birds will be difficult with this rain. I know flying foxes starve because the nectar is washed from flowers and assume the same holds true for nectar feeding birds. Insects would be taking refuge from the rain as would lizards. I am glad of the rain but admit to missing the sky and sun. This overcast drizzly weather has been continuing for weeks with little days of sun inbetween). Anyway, a day when one works at art is a good day. I've had a lot of good days. Again this drawing is in pencil and ink. I like the blackness of the ink contrasting with the malleability of pencil greys. Doesn't it just excite you to make something that was not there before? To create. It is our hand within God's I think. The Power That Is CREATES but we in our tiny little reality can mimic that greatness and pull something from nothing. It doesn't have to be world class, it only has to be ours. And original. Anyway, tomorrow, weather permitting we'll go to a garage sale at Helidon. They have pictures in frames for sale and I am always on the lookout for cheap frames with glass already in them. It makes framing work so easy since I don't have a clue how to frame things and have never bought materials. I have a huge frame, bought for $20 from St. Vinnies. I don't even have paper large enough to fit in it. Not sure what I'll do but other people work large so it must be possible.

Which brings me to an artist called Laurie Lipton. She works very large and in pencil and although her works are somewhat macabre, she is a tremendous draftsman. (Ah, the kookaburra got something from the grass and has flown off over the dam. Earlier a wallaby raced across the dam bank so fast I thought one of the dogs was in pursuit but they were hanging out on their beds. The rain has curtailed their activities too. Radar won't stand at the corner wallaby watching. Whippets don't like getting wet me thinks). I've gone to her website several times for inspiration - not the subject manner but the way that she portrays it. It's humbling. Not only is her work detailed and lifelike but she has this well of creativity. Her pictures mean something. You may not like the meaning portraying as it does death and a sort of hopelessness. It is not life enhancing, referring to a previous post, except with the beauty in which it is portrayed. There is one drawing called the kiss or the embrace or something like that. It is a close up of a man, alive and warm with that life being embraced by a thinly fleshed skull with a skeletal hand holding the man's cheek. It is awful and it is beautiful.

Just had a short email from a friend of ours. He and his wife have just split up. What a bastard. Why does it have to happen to the nicest people? I know, I know. There's a reason and it's all good in the end but it hasn't been so long that I don't remember how badly it hurts.

A bit blah today. H rang last night, before shower, before tea, and asked if I'd come in to assist with a caesarian (labrador, 7 live puppies, one dead from too long in the birth canal). Didn't get home until 10:30 but couldn't go to sleep until 11:30 as too wound up. No matter what time one's head hits the pillow the birds will sing at dawn which is at ten minutes to 5. They're actually singing before sunrise as I was awake at 4 listening to the kookaburras, always first out of bed in the morning, to be quickly followed by the dawn chorus which included ill-tempered honks from Algernon as he was up and where was his breakfast?

R is full of energy. Even though it's Sunday and he went to bed at the same time as I (although he was sound asleep on the couch when I got home) he's slashed the creek paddock which is full of shepherd's purse, nettles and cobblers pegs. I, on the other hand, have been looking at peoples sketches on the sketching forum, http://www.sketching.cc/index.html. Some talented artists to inspire. Hard-working too, sketching on subways, in the park or often, their own feet for want of a more convenient model. Out of all of them I've only bookmarked one artist. Yes, I admire the talent, the beauty and the detail of the artists but I'm looking for some intangible thing which involves technical expertise applied to the creative stream - not copying what is seen but what is created in the mind.

The last drawing, birds and a castle floating downstream is framed and hanging. This description does not sound very promising but I like it, perhaps because the birds, in ink contrasting with the lighter graphite, lend this a slightly menacing quality to what otherwise would've been just an attempt at drawing a building, something I have never done.

Then faced with another empty white sheet of paper I stalled. Not for long however. I was thumbing through The Noble Cat book and saw these photos of illuminations from a 12th century copy of a bestiary. The cats, stylized lions are 'framed' within the picture and stand against backgrounds of pattern; criss cross, a star spangled night sky, that sort of thing. The big cats are not lifelike and are crudely drawn, when compared to the realism today's artists are capable of, yet they have a charm and a punch that appeals to me. So. Rather than a big cat I've drawn the outline of an everyday house cat in mid leap. There is no detail, just a heavy outline and some light shading. I've only just begun it but the cat is framed within two drawn frames and will have a third *real* frame when finished.

Started a blog then a cracking great thunderstorm came through and I lost it. Not that it matters. Only 5mm of rain but gunshot claps of thunder and some hail. The dogs were shivering and shaking with fear. I don't know whether it's better to reassure them and therefore confirm in their minds that something is indeed wrong or talk to them in a hail and hearty manner as if nothing untoward is happening. Even the horses came into the yards and raced around. There was a little hail, not much, just enough to make one worry about the possibility of more.

Retire in 5 weeks and have begun to put in train a project to keep the brain from freezing up. French. Yup, finally got the first 4 lessons on the ipod. Not paying $25 to download the pdf files to go with it but have found a good free site where I can get the basics. And oh, how my tiny little mind is overcome. It's frightening. My memory is complete faecal material. The first phrase, the very first phrase is je m'appelle (my name is). I listened to it on the ipod half a dozen times and could I remember it? No. This is very scary. I know I've got a case of menopausal mind wherein the short memory is so short it's actually gone in reverse but I didn't realise it was this bad. All the more reason to undertake this, for me, daunting task.

Some people have a natural facility to learn languages. I am not one of them. Even in high school, when all my brain cells were operating at maximum capacity (doesn't the death of brain cells begin at 25?), I had to struggle to scrape by in Spanish. Not that it matters. There will not be a test at the end of the semester. This is strictly for my own amusement. Still, it will be helpful to try and learn something new and will perhaps help me when I watch the French films on SBS. Of course I'll always read the subtitles.

Am thisclose to finishing latest drawing. I like it. It's got more drama in it than the previous one even though the previous one has subject matter which is more fantasy and should be the more striking of the two. I've no inkling what my next project will be. That I need one is obvious.

Books have palled of late. I have about 4 going and none of them grab me. I think I'm just using them to distract me from what's really going on. I continuously look elsewhere rather than at what's really bothering me. So do I know what's really bothering me? Yes, and it's the same old story so I'm not going to repeat it here.

I have had 2 days where Dimitri has dropped the peg in the bowl. Lucky accident but hey, who cares? Made a big fuss, gave him heaps of treats and left. I wonder if he'll remember and get the idea. I stopped propping the peg on the end of the bowl each time he moved it. Allowed him to sometimes throw it far away and started c/t-ing when it moved even a millimeter closer. Poor fellow. It was confusing for him as he'd throw, chew and hold it in his foot and I wouldn't click as it wasn't going any closer to the bowl. He's such a dear boy.

Jake is a bit of a lad. He's so fierce and protective of his 'nests'. He'll even chase me when he's out when he's in a particularly 'bad' mood. But he loves his 'flying bird' trips when he stands on a branch and I run him around the yard gently waving the stick up and down. He isn't flapping his wings yet but he will raise and lower them. He keeps his comb up and he does have this look in his eye that makes me think he is having fun. He never hesitates to climb on the stick even though he knows ultimately it will lead back to his cage.

I am being quite tough on him and not giving him his big feed of seed in the afternoon. Only a teaspoon. There are lots of pellets however. I am hoping he will 'crack' and finally deign to eat them. This bit of seed in the morning and lots in the afternoon isn't getting us any nearer to converting him.

No More Title as They are Annoying

Finally remembered a dream, at least more of a dream than previously. I was in an urban area but it felt like the American southwest. An urban area but with the prow of a large grey ship jutting over ? There was a shop. The proprietor was the most beautiful man I had ever seen. His glory simply took my breath away. But he was very professional, very aloof. He showed me some totally inappropriate (for me) blouses. They were also sort of Indian/Southwest in style with flouncy bits around the loose neckline, cotton, pastel coloured. Nice blouses but just not me. Another woman came into the store and she had a lovely slim figure, was pert and nicely dressed. I felt frumpy, middle-aged and overweight in comparison. She seemed to click with him and I watched in frustration tinged with resentment while she chatted with this beautiful man who didn't seem to know I was alive. I remember going out on this 'ship's prow' in bright sunlight with the wind in my face and then going back into the store which was dark and rich and ornate. I glanced into one room and noted with surprise that it had rugs on the floor and was a meditation room. That made the beautiful man even more attractive. No, someone said or I somehow instinctively knew, it was a temple, a sort of mosque where Moslems would bow to Mecca.

The dream was vivid but mysterious. I don't know why I've remembered this one and no other. At least asking myself to remember my dream is starting to pay dividends. Having no remembrance of a dream life makes daytime life a little less rich.

Started the new drawing last night. Rather difficult as I had a determined little kitten trying to get on my lap. I'm writing this and clicking into a site to read about perspective. It seems straightforward enough reading about it but how does one decide where the extra vanishing points are. I get eye level and a vanishing point that is within the picture at the horizon line but getting that second (or third), which may be outside of the frame of the picture is a bit more problematical. I'm doing a loose copy of that castle as a background for the main feature, a floating dreamlike man. Well, that's the thumbnail sans castle. We'll see how it goes.

We're going to P and G's this afternoon hoping to see the wild cockatoos. R is so obsessed about the well-being of the long released Caruso it would be pure joy if he saw him today. P fed a wild cockatoo seed yesterday so G writes. Perhaps it's Caruso.

Jack is sunflower seed obsessed. I have been making sunflower and pellet rissoles for several weeks so that he would get the taste of the pellets and recognise them as food. No joy. He still refuses them. This morning I took Marvin in so he could demonstrate to Jack that pellets are edible. Jack was interested and even cracked a couple of pellets although he didn't eat them. Still, it's a start. I have removed all sunflowers from his seed mix. He's going to have to tough it out. He's not a happy bird this morning. I've asked R to pick up some shelled sunflower seeds. I plan to crush them with pellets, a half and half mixture so that he will get the taste of the pellets with the motivation of that lovely sunflower seed taste. The plan is then to reduce the amount of sunflower in the rissole until we're back to plain pellets. The problem is that pellet rissoles have a different look and texture from plain pellet. But we've got to try. He'll die of fatty liver disease if his diet isn't modified. By watching carefully I've come to realise that all Jack eats are the sunflower and safflower seeds - both with high oil content. Because he, we suspect, is an old bird, it is twice as hard to convert him than if he was a young bird. Even Dimitri, a wild caught corella, was easier to switch than Jack. Then of course there was Cambridge who never made the switch. He (she) lives with G and P and is on a seed mix with some vegetables. At least Jack will eat some vegetables; corn and apple. He isn't much chop on anything else.

Last night I dragged a comb through my hairbrush to clear it. Out came the strands which I rubbed between my palms to make them into a wad to throw away. I looked down at it and it was a mixture of brown and white hairs. It looked like a grizzled old man's chest hair. It just looked so odd and so not me. Is that what my hair is? If I was a man with a hairy chest that's what it would look like. Most of the time I go through the days and don't realise that I'm over half a century old then something innocuous will happen which brings it home. Life is short and fleeting and oh so swift!

I've come to the end of the blog for today and that blank title box waits. I've kept a journal for years without putting a title on each entry except for the date. The label box is okay for it is a good way to look up previous posts but this title void in just annoying. So I won't put one.

Jack and The Procrastinator and the ego.

It was a misunderstanding. P is quite happy to have Jack stay with us. G was under the misapprehension that he was causing us too much trouble. This misunderstanding probably arose because, as Jack is their bird, we always kept them up to date with what was happening with him - and of course it hasn't all been smooth sailing. He's on his second lot of antibiotics, he's been cranky and aggressive, and of course he's been attacked by Algernon. Hopefully, after P wrote me an email asking me to write G and say in clear terms that we love Jack and want him to stay, there won't be any more talk of Jack going. I do feel a little bad as Jack is bonded to G and that is hard but I don't think it will solve anything by sending him back - unless G was prepared to have him be her bird and spend alot of time with him - and she already has another love interest in Jack the rainbow. Ah, these bird relationships can be complicated.

Jack is obviously feeling better today. He's done a couple of Big Bird displays and he's fossicked around the aviary ground attacking cardboard and digging. The digging in dirt has its complications as if he has a wound, which he has, that's what must make it infected. But we can't stop him digging nor would we want to. Dirt floors are problematic in that they are hard to keep clean. We can only rake them out but for digging birds like cockatoos they are necessary.

I've been coasting which isn't good. Making excuses of busy-ness with housework and other non-essentials. Well, of course they are essential but who cares if the house is a bit untidy (me!). I haven't written for yonks which is part of the reason I"m trying to be a bit more regular in blogging as like any *skill* it becomes rusty with disuse. The art work lurches along in fits and starts. I sat on the couch last night and kept thinking I should do something with it and my arm just wouldn't reach out for it. It was too easy watching the movie (Ocean's 11) and not draw. As for yoga, didn't do any yesterday so must do some today but mostly what I've done today is sit on this damn computer and look at stuff and play spider solitaire (again! damn my addiction to that game). So, what am I going to do today besides play with the birds? Yoga, walk the dogs and draw. Thought I'd forgotten this idea I had but found the thumbnail on the side table. Not terribly original but original for me so there's something to look forward to after I've fumbled my way through this current drawing.

Prokofiev (sp) on the stereo. Every time I hear this piece I think of Sting's 'the Russians love their children too' from Dream of the Blue Turtles. Can't remember Sting's title.

Have ordered a CD of gamelan music from Sanity music. Have wanted some for a long time. It's music that truly sings. As I don't know who is who or what is what I more or less just picked a CD. Can't wait for it to arrive. I almost always do yoga to a 30 minute CD track of birdsong, frog croaks, harp and muted human voice. It's a lovely non-intrusive track and makes me feel I'm out in nature. I've only done yoga outside once. Climbed atop the concrete water tank and did it there. Wasn't too bad but the flies were a bit annoying. Would be nice to do it on a beach somewhere but I'd probably be too self-conscious to do it properly. At least in the privacy of one's home you concentrate on the movement and breathing and not how you might look to some passerby.

One thing yoga has shown me is how egocentric I am. Everything I do is tinted with ego. What will people think, do I look good, do I look bad, aren't I good at this, aren't I awful at this. It's like carrying around a great weight 24/7. The older I get the more the non-attachment of eastern religions makes sense. I used to rail against that as I thought without attachment nothing would get done. I mean you have to be attached to an idea to see it through to its fruition. You have to care about doing well to attempt anything - but are you caring about how others perceive your attempt or caring because anything attempted is worth doing well regardless? I don't know but I do see that, and I suppose awareness is the first step to change, being ego-weighted all the time is becoming quite tedious.

Dmitri (always) Odds and Sods

It's true. When I paint I don't write. When I write I don't paint. At least I'm doing something which is grand. Have finished the Triumvirate of Crows which actually looks more like the Triumvirate of Gannets but who's judging. It's okay. It's a little weird, I've morphed one of the wings into a hand and the birds flying over the sea play tricks with perspective a bit (intentional) but it works. At least for me and I'm the only one who has to be pleased.

The current work is a face made of feathers with very large eyes. Large staring eyes. It's eerie as I drew the eyes first and have been working outward so this face emerges from the page without an outline as such. I've considered attempting a tromp d' loeil of the face being framed by torn paper. Saw an example somewhere. Really brilliant. Then again, the original idea was having this face transmogrifying from bird into woman or woman into bird. No, that's not quite true. I wanted to work on feathers. Unfortunately although I've the patience to do a sort of overlapping shell I haven't the patience to do individual feathers. While I was preening Marvin's head last night I studied his feathers. They are so complicated yet simpler than what I've been drawing but as I've drawn 3/4 of the face I'll continue with the effect I've started with. It will turn out to be something. No art work I've completed has ever turned out the way I envisioned it. I wonder if that's true for all artists. It's because I haven't the technique but also because the vision is always more complete yet more ephemeral than the actualization.

Rearranged the verandah and Dimitri's abode yet again. A few nights ago, with no provocation that I knew of, Dimitri fell off his perch 3 times. It was dark. We hadn't gone onto the verandah. I heard no unusual noises outside, yet he fell. That was it. Despite the pillows and padding surrounding his perch falling off three times is just too much. Even if he wasn't hurt, and he wasn't, it's a blow to his confidence to keep falling and heaven knows the boy lacks confidence. The next day I removed the tree perch, the food table, the chair and all the pillows, blankets and padding. He has two large and chewable branches, one about 7 feet long, the other probably about 5 feet. The shorter one is before the screen doors to outside propped on a short log with another slimmer branch stuck inside it. This morning I sawed off about 6" of that one because he was launching himself from it and landing awkwardly. He's most disappointed because although he can climb the branches and run along them he is now a floor ornament. But an unbreakable floor ornament.

This morning, for the first time in months, I did some clicker training with him but without the clicker which he doesn't like. Not the noise but the association as I used it when I was pressuring him to 'be friends'. I'm only using my voice. I suppose I'm clicker training each time I reward him with a millet sprig when he steps nearer but this morning I reintroduced the clicker for target training. First with Tachimedes, who remembered what he was supposed to do almost instantly. I ignored Dimitri while working with Tach which had the desired effect of bringing him over to investigate. He beaked it the first time and hung on for the next two times, trying to pull it away. That was good enough for a start. Our worktable will be the floor. I'm quite excited again. Naturally once he was confined to the floor he became worried again. We've taken a few steps backwards. No way would he take anything from my fingers. Yet this morning, as he came within inches of my leg while I worked with Tach, and ignored him, illustrated conclusively that he will come around. Perhaps we'll even get to the point where we can learn parlor tricks together (retrieve, ring on a post etc.)

As much as I'd like this to be a true repository for thoughts, feelings and observations it isn't. There is no way that I can write in here like I do in a handwritten journal. I cleaned this office a couple of days ago and found empty journals of all shapes and sizes, journals I'd collected over the years for future use. They seemed somewhat sad as they are like friends I'll never meet. I may go back to handwriting for awhile as I miss the intimacy and the freedom of journal writing. Even though I have no followers nor am I likely to get any I write in here as though someone was looking over my shoulder - which keeps it inane and boring. Odd at my age to fear the opinion of others but I am still that well brought up girl who was chastised for saying the word 'guts'. And the words of mom still ring in my ears, 'don't ever write down what the whole world can't read'. Words of wisdom she may have learned the hard way. She burned reams and reams of paper in the front of the Sparta house. What were they? fledgling novels, journals, letters, essays? I'll never know but I have a feeling that something she'd written was used against her somehow as she was always very secretive about her writings. I only found bits and pieces after she'd died. I know she was an inveterate writer of something, sometimes had The Writer magazine, had a few books on writing plus Strunk and White but I think her own teacher was her constant practice and inherent talent. The bits I've read have always intrigued me as they were unfinished and I wanted to know what happened to the characters I'd come to know. But the characters died with Mom.