October is blastingly hot this year, with rare and spotty rain days.  It is normal to have Indian Summer in October here in the Bay, but the unrelenting heat is something new, i think, and the drought is deepening.   I have made a couple of trips to the Framing Garage, not sure what to call it.  Last week I spent most of Thursday afternoon, an hour or so indoors, an hour trimming the roses and clearing dead wood out of the hedge, then back in for an hour or so.  This is a good procedure, so I get some fresh air.  The subtle stink and dust are still limiting the amount of time I can spend there,  with or without a face mask.  Ew. 

Visually, though, it is a lovely space, and with the sun moving southward, the light is intense through the big window.  There is a paper-bark Eucalyptus trunk right out the window, which I find meditative.  I got quite a lot done, and really have a new approach–I have a select array of supportive audio clips, KPFA archives and New Dimensions shows, to keep my monkey mind distracted.  I am listening to an interview with Elizabeth Gilbert and Caroline Casey on creativity, and it has finally made a dent in my woe-is-me routine.

Painting is a communication, writing is a magic spell.  Ugly paintings are healing, revealing places where work needs to be done.  I know all this, but I still approached these crates of frames and glass and scraps of paper as an outsider, as to a foreign language.  Today I realize it is a collaboration, and began by pulling out a crate to SEE WHAT IS THERE.  Some cut glass, some frames with glass, some frames without glass.  I added a few more sheets of small cut glass I found in other boxes, and marked the sizes on them.  I pulled out frames in odd formats.  Labels on the drawers of hooks, pens, small nails, tags, etc.  I sorted two boxes of clippings, paper, drawings, prints, so that one has original art and archival paper, another has 8.5×11 copies and prints.  All sorts of clippings and articles are filed into folders, stacks of magazines sorted, and a sheaf of recipes! well, they go back home, to the kitchen.  The last thing I did was to put work-in-progress into a large drawer with sketchbook and supplies, so when I return I can pull them out and continue that project.

I drew out a plan for my tiny studio so that I can arrange to have an area (a 5′ x 8′ space I call the Annex) to use as an office/drawing space.  Currently there is a shelf behind the table with things I can’t really reach, which would be a handy receptacle for boxes of pens and paints and whatnot if it was under the window, and the desk,  right next to it, on the other side of the table.   The supro amp and printer shelf are currently switched, the desk and commode (a pine cabinet I use as a file cabinet) are also switched.  The table is where it is pictured, and my armoire and bed are off to the right, just past the commode.  I am not sure the wiring will work, but it can hardly be worse than the way it is now.

Two or so hours most every Tuesday night, three other people plus me come together here for band practice, crowding in from the door and sitting around the table.  Over time, I have figured out how to arrange things so I don’t have to do a major rearrangement every week.  What has happened, though, is that things get jammed up into an impermeable pile so that i am always searching, or climbing over STUFF to get to what I need, often without success.

I am reverting to a state I was in about a year ago, when my tag line was I CAN’T FIND ANYTHING!  Madness.

I have been playing music three or four nights a week, plus working at my gardening business, and then there is the new Love in my life, crowded into my very small studio apartment.  He has his own tiny space, in a large room that is 1/4 full of a stack of boxes he used to have in storage.   I don’t have the luxury of having put much of what I own into a discrete space, and I find it very distracting and confusing to have four different places where I have belongings that I don’t really need or use packed in boxes.  No, make that 5.

Ok, that took six weeks.  One thing I appear to be very diligent about is acquiring new objects to lose, unused,  somewhere in the clutter.  I finally got a nice new glass cutter with 6 wheels.  I just have to get it over to the framing studio, but now I can’t seem to find it.  There are a great many sheets of glass that I could use to fill odd-sized frames I have there.  I plan to drop by to look for my very small Cotman traveler watercolor box to take on our trip to Iowa-  I have a beautiful valise filled with stuff for watercolor class, but neither of my paintboxes is in there.  There are other options if I can’t track them down.

Last week at a bookstore in Santa Cruz (right by the Saw Festival jam) I bought a book on hand lettering, so I am putting together a set of pens and stuff to use in my daily journal– hoping I can sit still long enough to do some drawing.  I seem to always have enough time to write almost every day, but even then there are long stretches without entries.  I got a subscription to the S.F. Chron, thinking I could emulate a friend who copies a photo from the newspaper every morning, but I usually can’t find a thing i want to draw.

I am so conflicted.  I don’t know why I can’t go get a glass cutter and make some frames usable for prints TODAY.  This is a period of shuttling back and forth with a few objects I think I need here, there, here again, back and forth.  I don’t have any sort of system–random crates of things organized by vague shape and size.  Multiple objects redundantly filed, insufficient to the task.  No clear outcome.  Not a great pull to get there, then psychic overwhelm and subtle stink of stale raccoon pee.  Hmmm, what’s not to recommend this?  I used to draw more when life was more difficult.

Peyote button, from life, Tucson 1972

Last week I ordered a book from Amazon-  I had been planning for a long, long time to give it as a gift, but could not let go of the copy I have for sentimental reasons.  I had earned two $25 gift cards from my credit card after paying off the overdue hospital bill of my now-deceased life partner.  Imagine the conundrum.  The package appeared at my door Monday, almost instantaneously.  When I picked it up and felt it, I was already disappointed, because it was too small.  I tried to bend it–paperback?  No, hardcover.  So, I tore the envelope open and there was a different book, SexDeathEnlightenment, by Mark Matousek.  What the hell?  I checked the invoice.  The book I ordered was clearly described, and there was an email address to contact in case of error.  So, I did.

Today I got a reply, keep the book, yours was right here, I already gave it to the postman!  Expedited shipping.

So I opened it up, it is a story of life with Andy Warhol, with a blurb by Ram Dass  “An extraordinarily articulate account of how the sicknesses of our time can spawn spiritual awakening and compassion.”

Set the timer–

It has been a week since I found the note from LL on my door.  He had dropped it in the mailbox of the wrong apartment, as if he was ashamed, or didn’t want me to see it, really, for some reason, Cowardly, Nefarious, Idiotic.

Steve’s truck and Lynn’s Mustang 1997

He had dropped it in the mailbox of #1–the site of our contentious 15-week battle–now Amy’s apartment, Steve’s old place for 35 years, where we lived together for 22 years, anyway.  THE NOTE WAS IN ALL CAPS, WHICH LOOKS LIKE YELLING, particularly in that the address and salutation were in Normal Writing.  He had signed it “Manager”, and threatened me with towing if I park in the driveway (at my expense) and stated that I was told before moving in to Apartment #2 that there was no parking provided on the property, and I should “REFRAME” from parking there.  After I read it (and freaked out!) on that Thursday night I sealed it back up and put it back in the (wrong) mailbox.  The next day Amy left it for me, standing up on my doorknob, against the door frame.

I have been parking in the driveway since at least 1995, before we parked my 1957 VW van there.   .

My first move was to write a long, long, frantic, angry reply in longhand.  Then I typed up a WARNING PRIVATE PROPERTY THIS VEHICLE IS LEGALLY PARKED DO NOT TOW WITHOUT EXPRESS WRITTEN PERMISSION OF VEHICLE OWNER  with my name, signature, cell phone number, printed and taped to the inside front and back windows of the Westfalia.

My VW van Betsy and Steve’s Datsun 1995

Then I wrote a simple reply to the LL and edited it, printed it out, edited it further, further, printed it out, and emailed a copy of the original yelling NOTE and a copy of the reply to my “Lawyer”  Jeffrey.  Then I took the van on vacation for a few days, to chill, relax, “reframe”.

Meanwhile, Amy is cool, frantically apologizing, wants to park so everyone is happy–but she is paying extra for the space.

It’s terribly stressful coming home to a sense of attack and dilemma, wondering where to park, listening for a tow truck, and not knowing what to do, or what YELLING letter of weirdness will pop up next.

No Clear resolution.

DING!

We had such a great time Tuesday night at the Monte Vista Lodge, playing with the band Moody Ridge.  I sat in front of the Christmas tree, right next to the fireplace, where I could easily plug in my bass amp.  It is so warm, there is no snow, so the Christmas trees and snowflake decor are still up, giving some sense of Winter.  Wednesday we did some thrift-and-gift shopping- Helen gave me a teapot with lovely prints of comfrey on one side and camomile on the other.  I found a fabulous white jean jacket with fluffy fur lining, a possumy thing to wear to gigs, it does still get chilly at night!

Everyone is so friendly, and hungry for human contact, and good cooks, too.  People in shops and restaurants launch into conversation at the slightest provocation, it’s almost annoying.  I am a recluse by comparison, having come from the densly populated, over-stimulating  SF Bay Area.  But then, so did many of them, years ago.

I came out to the van to rest last night after a big dinner of  spaghetti and meatballs and beer and birthday cake and ice cream.  I fell asleep just after eight o’clock–woke up hours later and, as is often the case, missed the party.  It’s well after 9 AM now, no one else is up yet.   I am settled in my Westy on a flat spot up near the cabin, making coffee.  This is a breakthrough, one of thijngs that I couldn’t imagine doing but is the easiest task possible.

Yesterday I took a hike with the dogs and got spooked–wasn’t sure where I was.  Today Doogie came to see if I would go again, but i had just made my first! cup of westy-coffee and settled in to read a book.  When he showed up and barked, I poured the coffee into an insulated cup and changed my shoes.  By the time I got ready, he had gone.  It was cold and a wind had come up, dusty and gusty.  I decided to stay in the van and read–but as soon as I leaned back on the bed, the thermos cup tipped and the whole thing ran over the ocunter and onto my stack of papers, files, journal.

So, start again.

I’ve done this before, set a timer for 15 minutes and draw–or write. Today, a story about the house next door.

just a trim, thanks.

My friend Joe Bynes bought it in 1960 or so.  I’m not sure– a lot of people bought houses in this neighborhood then, and Black people, like Leola and Ollie and Bruce, during or just after WWII.   Joe owned a lot of houses in Berkeley, five anyway, and a ranch with a Spanish colonial style house that had an intact speakeasy in the basement.  In front of all his houses, Joe planted redwood trees.  At this house, he planted at least eight; three in the verge, one in the front lawn, two (or three, I think one died) by my back fence, and twins in the far southeast corner. >

The woman who bought the house from Joe’s  brother Harold after he died ($120,000 I think) had  rented it out (after kicking the cool neighbors out by promising them $500 cash they never received) to a series of okay people–she was okay, too, not a bad absentee landlord as far as I was concerned, otherwise.

So the trees, anyway, have been there for 40-some years.  I imagine they were planted in 1974, I don’t know if I heard that or if it was just the frenzy of redwood planting then, in the newly built Bart stations etc.  I have been fortunate to have a view of a stately redwood and its attendant fauna, squirrels and birds, at possibly every place I have lived in Berkeley and Oakland.

Well, a Flipper has bought the house, cash, because it needs so much work and is not up to code, you can’t get a loan.  The guy who redid the house next to Doug and Dean over the back fence bought it with what he cashed in off that house.  We are looking forward to a less-than-horrific experience since he did that place in record time, from a junkyard shambles, and it looks great.

The trees are coming down.  The two snags by the fence are gone, and the sun is blazing on the deck this morning.  They took the big beauty in the front yard, too.  At least they used the lumber.  In back today I saw them going up with ropes to the two in the corner–I had to go out and ask, but no, they are just giving them a trim.  It’s kind of bare out, but I’ll get used to it.  Once the beech leafs out again I will have shade on the hot days.  Things change.