July 2024

Planning to head to the mountains for a painting retreat, seeing how many unfinished sketchbooks I can cram into my luggage. How much will I share? I feel like I struggle to be original, I don’t know why. I don’t post images that are basically renditions of other people’s ideas, hence the lag time between postings–yet isn’t that how one learns? Is anything original? I’m just trying to fill pages.

My goal is to paint faster, looser, brighter, louder. I’d rather copy than not paint.

These are my brushstrokes. Sometimes I work from photographs. Maybe the key is to do the same thing over and over until the sense of your own being is the only thing left, like repeating a mantra, saying your own name until it becomes something foreign. I’m just not there yet. I’m still gathering.

June 2024

Here at my work table I am frequently of the illusion that I am at my old “penthouse” apartment on on Emerson Street. I had a three-bridge view there, before that big Y-shaped condo tower in Emeryville blocked out part of the City. I picture the little kitchen nook behind me, the parking lot out the window to the west, and the big redwood tree Wilson the Escaped Amazon parrot used to visit. I was there the night of the 1989 earthquake, watching the Marina burn, and the lighted tree on the blacked out hills to the east. I was there the day of the big fire, before it was a thing, I saw smoke at 8 AM, when it was 80 degrees and windy., and called 911. 

It is only 2-plus blocks, .2 miles, though thirty years away.  The sensation first came up some months ago when I suddenly realized that I was not on the third floor, in what was actually my bedroom there. The second time it happened i couldn’t dispel the vivid sense of the kitchen behind me, the memory of my little closet, and the niche that was a perfect fit for my LP’s and audio equipment at my elbow. I never actually had a table in that room.  I think the refrigerator backed up to the foot of the bed

One day I got up from the table here, and almost walked through the doorway to my current kitchen.  In my mind’s eye the bathroom was through a door to the main room and to the left. Even writing this I stop to switch tracks, the memory train wants to take that familiar option. I’ve become really fond of it, not looking up from my journal or painting, imagining myself there, another episode of timeline jumping, making a foray into the past to upgrade and heal some past trauma or imagined inadequacy.  Even now I can clearly conjure up the illusion that I am there.

That was another dump I moved into and transformed into a glorious mirage, the tall victorian windows and the fireplace with a huge mirror that reflected the moon rising over the hills, walls I painted to match the glazed green tile, circa 1906.  I had my cat Betty there; where is that drawing of the mouse-mouth? 

What is the purpose of that memory? It was a previous time when I lived alone, not the first, relationship free–after Ed moved back to The City.  I had the same sense of complete centeredness and fortune in my choice of home and surroundings, OMG to the extent that I once had my drums set up there! Poor neighbors!

5.2.24

It’s not my birthday, but the sun crosses 13 degrees 01 minute of Taurus at 4 PM today. It’s Thursday, Ganesh has brought cake, so we are planning a celebration in the garden. It’s the peak of the season, the yellow orchids are blooming, tiny Violette just opened, Joasine Hanet is covered with buds, the grapefruit tree and the mystery pink rose are perfuming the air, the apples are cross-pollinating. Since rain is predicted for my actual birthday (again) I will do an end-run by celebrating today.

I have been inspired to putter in the garden, and have worked all week since the rains stopped. I have a space of time after Texas, Petaluma, Page Street, before I head out for a week re-treat, a gift of a parkup at a “cabin” in the Gold Country, where I hope to reboot my watercolor practice. I bought a thick pad of Fabriano watercolor paper and some Pitts pens to add to my pile of unused materials, sigh, so busy.

I have been productive in other realms–the template of the backyard is decades wide, a sort-of miracle. Somewhere around 1994 I salvaged flagstones from the yard at Emerson Street, and we laid them around the legless Weber grill we used as a portable fire pit. There is another patch of flagstones near where the shed used to be, where the propane grill Peggy gave me lives. There is a rectangular brick spiral floor Steve installed in the corner to make a little room for the clawfoot bathtub we had found on the street. He also built the bamboo fence and gate I patched and stablized a few posts back.

I have a number–nay, a plethora–of patio chair frames, and have tried several means of reweaving them. Some have not been successful, like the neon pink landscape tape that wouldn’t hold a cat, and faded instantly, and the multicolored strands of landscape twine that were too stringy and unwieldy. I tried a couple of methods of restoring the hoop chairs, including copying the original canvas–I now recall that I got those from Grif in torn condition–that had to be 35 years ago. They have been wandering around the yard as ghosts, even as the rope-on-wire contraption I attempted sat un-damaged through many years of sun and rain exposure. The clothesline I wove onto the foot stool has also stood the test of time, but I haven’t found that exact type since.

Last week I stopped into O’Reilly’s looking for some 80’s era 8 amp fuses for Westina’s cigaret/interior/stop light circuit, after replacing and rewiring the socket, and in the sale bin I found a 50′ roll of orange cord for a measly $3. I have bought cord before, wildly unsuitable, uncomfortable, or worse. This was all I needed, appropriate materials in neon orange, to inspire a new attempt. Stringing, unstringing, restringing errors, it took bits of two days to get to this point. I left the hoop and the center ring (where did that come from?) in its current shade of rusty metal, which took on a satisfying purple tone against the green and orange. Might still move that knot to the left . . . right leg. Why knot?

Late yesterday I pulled the old rope-and-wire version apart and reworked it, 12 loops instead of 16, with a salvaged plumbing slip-nut, or whatever it’s called, as the center ring. Oddly, I had begun to paint the rope orange at some point. It has been living in the elements, poorly attached to the hoop chair frame for many years, and the rope is still strong and not too shabby (chic).

I remember Steve’s comment that inspired me to start my garden business over thirty years ago: “You’re never happier than out here with the worms!” Yes, we are.

4.22.24

We were booked to play the Petaluma Butter and Egg Days parade–a hinky affair, but super huge, a reported 30,000 in the audience. Lots of hokey costumes, robot chickens, hay bales on trailers, classic vehicles, high school bands and wrestling teams, and local dairy and poultry producers. Art and I were invited to represent the Cotati Accordion Festival, playing jigs and polkas while riding on the ragtop mechanism of a 1952 Chevrolet convertible.

I hustled back from Texas in time to decompress and have a rehearsal, and gathered a costume from some possible items I had laid out before I left. Learning the Chevy was gray, I chose the red twirl skirt, black and white striped leggings, and a black bodice and cowboy hat. Sitting in the sun for two hours, I ended up with quite the sunburn on my upper back. I had a super fun time, and when we got to the end I said, can we go around again? As if it was a carnival ride. Nope, the parade was over–we were near the end, #169 of 178 entries.

We packed our gear into Art’s Tesla and headed back to Canyon, where Westy was waiting for me. I stopped in at Misty’s and had a beer with the old gang–it was a bittersweet moment–they were on their way to the Redwood Rodeo, and I was dressed for it, but I let it pass. A rough night–I slept fitfully under the full moon, then made coffee and slipped out the gate just past dawn.

4.6.24

Well, it’s that anniversary again. Almost at the last minute I decided to drive to see the total eclipse from the balcony of my old music partner’s apartment in Austin Texas. Truly idiots have angels, and likely, angels need idiots to exist. I had packed out not-that-early on a Sunday morning, but the van battery was stone dead, would not jump, would not charge. AAA sent a guy with a battery that almost fit, he made it work and got me on the road. I tried filling my tires the day before, but there was one tire that wouldn’t cooperate. The inflater valve squealed in terror, but, idiot that I am, I decided to have it checked out “later”. Now I was actually walking distance from my tire guy over the holiday, and intended to drop in to have it checked then, but, well, here we are.

Crossing the CA/AZ border at Needles after a night at Mojave National Preserve I stopped into a place that said TIRES, and TIRE SALE, to check the pressure and get 2 gallons of $7/per gas, when Johnny approached and said my FRONT tire looked a little low . . . distracted, oops, I ended up filling my tank, and pulled up to the air hose. He proceeded to show me the indicators, and the rot, and said, these aren’t safe on the highway–he showed me the date on the one I was having issues with–2015. I ended up with a full set of fresh new tires. He also pointed out that my shocks were original (1983) equipment, and leaking, and down the road in Kingman I could have them replaced, and called the guy to see if they were in stock.

Well, it could seem to be a scam, but then, even I could see they were not what I wanted to be riding on, and worrying about. Honestly, road angels exist. Somehow my work truck always had up-to-date wheels, but my van guys only go so far.

I stopped for a scrumptious carnitas taco at what appeared to be a Subway/truck stop/gift store in Seligman, so it was well into afternoon when I was back on the road, driving through an ice storm and searching for a campground. I pulled into the lot at Petrified Forest and recognized clear signs of Boondocking, chose a spot with a view of trees, and tucked in for the night.

The next morning I woke to ice half-an-inch thick on my windshield, and remembered the ice scraper I somehow had the sense to acquire and squirrel away in the back of the van. I shivered and watched as mothers hugged and hustled their tiny children through the freezing wind onto a school bus idling nearby. I pulled out early, but the fog was so thick I had to pull over and wait until I could at least see the trucks rumbling by. I felt blessed, so at the New Mexico border I bought myself a vintage Navajo Sterling cuff as a birthday present, what the hell I had emergency cash, the emergency was averted, plus now I am a genius.

Through Albuquerque, and after a sweet boondocking rest stop near Santa Rosa, New Mexico I turned south and through backcountry Texas. One more stop at a spendy RV “resort” (the blue dot) where I plugged in my laptop and got some email, then off early on Thursday morning, arriving in Austin (the red pin) in time to join Grif on his flower delivery route. Not before getting rerouted, not for the first time, by an inane map app that sent me to a completely different address with almost no relation or reason to where I was destined, a 27 minute delay . . .

2.9.24

e.g. just spent two hours deciding to go out, finally i was ready for the long walk (what, about 45 feet) and down the stairs. Glorious day, fresh air and sun after the long long rain, and there i was, in my element, checking oil, checking tires, pulling crocosmia before it spread along the fence, hauling a box and a bag and a chainsaw and a few things on hangers into the house. curious. 

ah. there’s the new moon.