The Cuckoo Bee

I was just reading some old posts from my former blog.  Do you remember those days?  They seem to have been different in a profound way from my current life and the sort of occasional blogging I do.  For one thing I never make humorous comments about things I observe anymore.  Why?  I saw giant marshmallows at the store today.  Wasn’t that fascinating? I locked myself out of the house while I was carrying my keys, and wandered around trying all sorts of things to get inside even though I had the keys in my hand.  I lost my credit card five times.  I just don’t care about these things–I used to observe them and be like “how wacky” and now I’m just like, so what. What else? I saw an old lady in the park last week dipping her long fingernails into a tin that appeared to contain squid ink and withdrawing chunks of animal flesh, and it struck me in just the right way and gave me that tickle, but it never occurred to me to blog about it.

Is it because I have pretty much covered all that material?  Is it because the reader I used to address, who provided so much jollity in everyday matters, is no longer around? Is it because of the mumbo-jumbo? Is it because now that I do art all the time I kind of have something real to occupy me, and I don’t have that feeling that I always did that I am living on the fringe of society, frittering away my skills in an amusing but kind of pointless way, and now I feel like I am actually doing something so am not compelled to spend my days and nights thinking up funny comments about life’s absurdities?  Yes, I think it’s all that, plus life is different in quality now that the kids are in school all the time and I actually talk to people I like instead of just going to playdates and baby class and whatever.  It used to be a monumental task to socialize, and now I can do it again pretty easily…I mean it’s easy to get a babysitter and get the heck out of here.  And it used to be, reader who no longer is around, that we had that kind of high school thing all the time where we were totally incompetent and it was all so funny, interacting with the grownup world, and incomprehensible, and we were not part of it.  Now I seem to be part of it.  Maybe it is just that I am not sequestered with the kids anymore but can move freely around being myself and have nothing to feel alienated about.  And doing things I like because I’m good at them, and because I like them, instead of endlessly applying for jobs I shouldn’t ever have.  I don’t know, it’s like how I used to contemplate my husband and wonder how he could be so normal and interact at work the way he did, and now I find myself inserted in the world in just the same way.  It was pretty easy, reader, to grow up.  It involves a great deal of alcohol consumption, very little interaction with my mother, and much less caring about everything.  Plus new friends–that is what makes it all real, actually meeting people that I have real feelings for, plus people that I just like to hang around, and people that I like to see every day on other levels.  My God, it’s all so normal!  How odd.  Do you know, I never watch tv at all now?  I have almost no contact with entertainment or the media at all. It definitely is less funny around here since the special reader evaporated, or whatever happened.  On the other hand, it is still funny.  And I am more able in general.  Interesting.

In class this week and last week we worked on hatching instead of blending.  This week we are using ink and brush, and I skipped class today because I didn’t feel like going.  I have a problem, in general, with class attendance when class is more than once a week.  I am also taking etching and this is the sketch I am working on to etch this week:

It’s a process.  Like leaking through hyperspace–as one of my new characters in this modern setup said.  It’s certainly all different, and it seems to be revolving around my husband–curious.  Maybe we actually have a life together that is realer than whatever memories I have.  Yesterday was our seven-year anniversary, by the by.  I don’t know, reader, I have no expletives to interject right now or random crap to tell you, and frankly it’s kind of a burden on my mind to go around all day remembering the funny things that happen so I can write them down.  If you were around I’m sure we would be chortling at all kinds of things.  So anyway, that’s what happened to my delightful blog, in case anyone cared.  I have to say I care a little–but not very much.  See you in the funny papers, reader!

General query first:  how does one live? Let’s say there is some point to the minutiae of life, and the facts of our various existences.  How does it all interact with the fact of our shared larger existence, of everythingness, of the ethereal? Is it all an influx and outflux? What do we do, or is it rather only a matter of not doing and allowing Jah to provide, as Jah is constantly doing no matter what we do or do not do?  But why the individual suffering, reader, unless that is an illusion? But still, why?  Why do we seek the same things, love, fun, over and over? How many times do we have to experience something to be satisfied? Infinite? What’s the point? Is there a point–is it bringing out the ethereal, is it all more manifestation of the eternal? Is it pointless? Is it all the same? I don’t know, do you?

And friends, aren’t they important, though? New friends and old friends.  And ourselves.  I guess the question is its own answer, as usual, and it’s only a matter of the immense knowledge we already contain.  Okay! On to the business of life.

This is part of a larger charcoal drawing that we worked on for three days.  I am now taking class nine hours a week, and this was about nine hours, although at one point I was just like “this should have been over three hours ago.” In between days the picture smudged and smeared all over the place in transit–it is all very soft charcoal.  Not too keen on this one although it was fun to do.

This is a study of a Ma Yuan painting that I love.  I like how this turned out very much.

Last week in class we did the portrait.  These were some of the warm-up gesture heads we drew.

Here’s the portrait.  Somewhere during the last class I realized I was drawing Deanna Troi.

Speaking of the business of life, I kind of miss hanging out at work with boys from New Jersey and Pennsylvania.  I’m thinking about going back just for that.  And math, I miss math in a way that I used to miss art.  Ain’t life like that.

I like this one although it is kind of the same as the one I drew in fifth grade or whenever that was.

This one would not photograph, but it doesn’t matter, it’s just a study of colors.  My younger son thought it was the backyard.  What do you think?  I drew this with colored pencils and watercolor pencils while sitting for several hours under an umbrella next to Gina, who was reading some trashy novel on her kindle.  When I started it was just after noon and the sky was bright white, but at the end it was around four and starting to get bluer.  Gina went inside at one point and brought me back a blueberry lemonade wine cooler so I was a little drunk, and it was very hot, and we had to keep moving our chairs to keep up with the spot of shade the umbrella was making, and every time I moved I would drop all my pencils in the sand and the folding chair would turn inside out.   There was not really anybody around, and the sand and ocean were large and empty, and it was especially nice to sit there and not talk to Gina for hours–I wish I were there right now.

One more thing that I enjoyed this week.  I just read Symposium by Plato, and it was hilariously funny.  I had no idea.  I think I had just read The Republic before, and I found that boring, but the dialogues with Socrates are lovely, as you probably know.  Anyway somebody is discussing, in Symposium, the report that first in the universe came Chaos, and then came Earth and Love–those two were the first things created–or maybe uncreated? Anyway, it occurred to me that maybe love is not, as I was thinking before, all around us and flowing through everything, or else like MSG and making everything more itself, but is, actually, what everything, Earth, us, paper cups from Sbarro, are made of–what all our cells are composed of–maybe that is love.  I’m tired.  My tonsils have been hurting for the last month, and I think I lost my purse this afternoon. And both kids are home from school. I can’t decide if I need some booze or some pills.  See you, reader.

It has been a long time! Things have been fermenting and percolating and other beverage metaphors in my mind and heart–that is why I have not written.  Not that they are done with the process, unless it’s all an illusion, but it seemed that it was not the time to update until now when I am sick and sitting here pining, sort of pining, that is, I don’t know what the universe has got in mind but maybe I will stay out of it more.  Or less?  Let’s make progress shall we? Unless it’s all illusory?

I have been taking a class six hours a week in drawing the figure.  We start with a bunch (seven or ten) of short, like thirty-second to two-minute, poses.  The purpose of that is to get the arm loosened up with the charcoal and just express the weight and feel of the pose. And we learned the word “contrapposto,” which we use daily or rather by the half-hour.

The teacher encourages us to use the side of our charcoal (this is soft or medium vine charcoal, just a three inch piece broken off the stick) to express mass.  The idea is to describe the whole gesture in one line, and then if there is time put in all the limbs.

Then we gradually do longer and longer poses.  Here are a couple.

(the ghost figures are smudges from the opposite page of the drawing pad)

The class is amazing.  It is wonderful to draw the human form.

From last semester, here is the painting I did:

And finally a Bargue study (I have to say I hated this class and dropped it, but the method works well–for me, works well in moderation):

All right.  So that’s that.  For the other things, I feel like Costa Rica has moved into my soul with its vividness and colors and is confusing me in an exciting, lovely, and fun but disturbing way, disturbing to my equilibrium I mean.  Reader, is it the fact that I once again cannot hear from my left ear and all the cells of my body seem to be on strike that is leading me down this road of incomprehensibility?  Or is it just the way things are?  Let’s keep it real, reader, keep it very real and just think about soup and maybe sewing machines or apples.  Time to lie down.   Bye!

I had something beautiful in my hands yesterday morning, which made it hard to drive the car, but what are you going to do when you are motoring randomly up and down streets looking for the laundromat so you can retrieve the clothes, and St. Francis is standing right there on the corner of third and Jefferson?  And of course, Ponyo loves Sosuke.  And the radio was playing that Pink Floyd song and it all became very real, something about the largeness and all-inclusive friendliness of God and the happiness and warmth of stigmata, and the joy of St. Francis.  Oh all right, just look at the picture, it doesn’t contain all that but I tried.

Ponyo loves Sosuke.

I had a strange day today.  I slept but fitfully last night, so this morning I was kind of dying taking the kids to school in the drizzle, and when I got home around 9:00 I sat down to do some kind of work or something but the next thing I knew I was waking up in my bed and it was after one o’clock in the afternoon.  So I got up and staggered around in the rain with the idea that I would go get a smoothie at a place I wasn’t sure existed–but fortunately it did exist so I ordered whatever the first thing was on the menu and the smoothie brought me back to life, and I noticed that directly outside the smoothie place everyone was waiting for the bus–the bus to New York.  So I got in line too, just standing there while working on my smoothie, and then when the bus came I got on and went for a ride to Port Authority.  Then I walked around Port Authority for a while, and went up to the front door with the idea that I would somehow get over to J.Crew in the Flatiron area (I know not how) but the rain and cold were very forbidding, so I went and wandered around Port Authority some more.  It was very much like something I would have done in college–spending endless time in bus stations–and it reminded me that the very first time I ever drank coffee was from a vending machine in the New Carrolton, Maryland rail station, I think in 1992, so I went to Java House and had a coffee.  Then I went upstairs and got on the wrong bus, and eventually got on the right bus, and got back to Hoboken.

The whole time I had in mind the way I used to take the bus to downtown Bethesda to go to the library, just for something to do, starting when I was about ten.  Back when I was at that young age I would take a wooden baseball bat with me on the bus to deter rapists.  I was very susceptible to rumors of rapists and that kind of thing as a child.  Anyhoo, when you have the kind of spare time you do when you are ten you get to know places well.  In my grown-up life, it used to be that I would rush through Port Authority on the way to work, and merely despise the crowd or whatever was in the way, or else have no feelings for it at all–but when you can meander around a place with no direction or anything pressing on your mind, you can kind of see it better–see how Port Authority is, itself, the way it rests there all day with everyone coming and going.  Anyway.  That was what I did today.

One of those surprising benefits of having children just occurred.  It being the weekend, and raining,  and me being alone with the kids, I have been sitting here (or rather trying unsuccessfully to hide in the bathroom or closet) and listening to the torrent of monkey screams that constitutes daily life, just kind of banging my head against the wall or windowsill, you know how that goes.  But the babysitter got here finally and I went outside (without putting on clothes other than the rags I wear as pajamas) and it was about the most novel thing in the world to walk around the block ten times and then get juice at the corner:  the quiet and cold, and the gray sky, and the thrilling presence of young green leaves, and the damp breeze showering me with cherry blossoms–I mean how much more populated with things does the universe get? Or perhaps it is not the children who are making me take note of that but rather the contrast with last night’s gay birthday party, complete with stripper–it was kind of dirty, but not that dirty–maybe that enhances my appreciation for cherry blossoms.  Dunno.

Reader, I am exhausted by the pursuit of enlightenment–I realize that makes no sense, because enlightenment is something we all have, not something we pursue, blah blah blah.  But really, why does it all come, and go, and come again, and go again, and why do I care?  Also, the painting is so strange in a way drawing isn’t–up close it looks like nothing and then from the other side of the room it does look like something, but that is not what I’m looking at as I do the painting–I suppose it’s not that strange, but it is strange.  This is just a preliminary drawing, since I am not drawing under the painting at this point.

And then some drawings.  Yesterday was our last art class and I have to say I was in love with the teacher.  I don’t know why I’m so tired today because we didn’t get that drunk–maybe it’s the love.  Maybe not.  I also went rollerskating for the first time this afternoon with my new skates down on the pier, and it was so lovely–there is a big ceiling like a giant bus stop right in the middle of the pier, which is otherwise brand new white cement.  It was sunny in a Mediterranean way and the giant bus stop and the columns holding it up make nice shadows to rollerskate over, and there is no one down there, and the pier is huge.  I am so grossly out of condition to do anything except walk and tote children that rollerskating made me max out the muscles of my legs so now they are like rags.  On the plus side of aging, or something, my art teacher, who is 44, told us yesterday he is starting a Ph.D in art history in the fall–that was inspiring to me.

I was on the way out the door to get the kids today and I found a brown bag, and decided I had to try out my white charcoal pencil that I bought four months ago and never used–so this is with a wooden 2B pencil, as opposed to the usual mechanical one I use, and white charcoal pencil.  It was fun and took five minutes.

Ball-point pen drawing.

Lamppost down by the pier today with my Muji pen/pencil and notebook

And here’s the giant busstop I rollerskated under. It was a quite nice afternoon.

I have two books I want to read now:  The Practice and Science of Drawing, and Humboldt’s Gift by Saul Bellow.  I can’t decide if I want to read Humboldt’s Gift or not.  There is something very sensitive in it, like Augie March, but also unsettling, but it is kind of seductively attracting me anyway.  If I weren’t so tired from rollerskating, the pursuit of enlightenment, and being drunk last night I could probably read some of it right now.  Maybe I should have taken a second nap after all.  Good day, reader.

It’s not so much a message as random blathering.  This morning I was in A &P before 9 am and they were blasting the George Michael classic “I Want Your Sex” in every aisle–I was enchanted, obviously, but still kind of amazed.  Circa 1988 they did not even play that song on the radio before 9 pm in the more Republican areas of our nation (rather, as my cousin reported to me, they replaced the word “sex” with “love” throughout the entire song), and here the full version in all its explicitness was playing for the delectation of the mommies and babies wandering around, and noticeably loudly too–God Bless New Jersey.

Then I was supposed to meet a friend for “tennis” at 10:00, which got pushed to 11:00, and then noon, and then turned into lunch at the Elysian Cafe, so I went over there and waited for 35 minutes, reader–do you think that is enough?  anyway I got kind of drunk while waiting.  I was drinking something called a Sloe Gin Ricky–oh reader, it was good.  It was very good.  So then eventually I just couldn’t sit there anymore, despite the fact that my table was under a shady tree and it was warm and breezy, and the shadows were falling over the marble tabletop and the Elysian is at a comparatively quiet corner of Hoboken–anyway then I had to stagger back home.  The problem in Hoboken is that it is probable that you will run into someone you know while bumbling along drunk at noon–that even happened once in Bethesda, in fact, with your dad, reader–not that you read anymore, right? Well, I still love you.  Can you tell I am residually drunk? Time to eat something, I suppose. xx reader (poison? kisses? booze?)

Earlier I said (and I knew this was a lie at the time, but in that odd way that happens it took me until now to fully bring that to my own attention or at least do something about it) that the key thing for me is to realize how special I am–that is not the key thing for me, because I do not realize how special I am.  The key thing for me, at this point, anyway, is not to judge myself at all–at all.  There are good reasons for not judging yourself, reader, but I’m tired and I don’t want to get into it all right now.  So back to the lie, I suppose not judging is the beginning of realizing specialness–but it was still a lie.  Among others that I have told recently–why?  I just don’t know.

Here’s that tree again.  Do you know, reader, that I was not even aware I had drawn a woman’s crotch until I posted this? Of course I knew something was going on. Hm.

So reader, I just don’t know what the point is of the mumbo-jumbo.  I was just now reading my last few entries and I had completely forgotten all those feelings and ideas.  So was there a point?  I guess so…but is not there also a point somewhere at the bottom of a bottle of tequila?  Strong feelings are pointed to me–they poke me and give me ouchies.  And with that we’re back to mumbo-jumbo I suppose.  Let me tell you something other than that in the new paragraph I am about to start, and I will eschew mentioning dead people visiting me or any kind of metaphysics.

So let’s see, I bought some lemon curd but I don’t know what one does with it.  Oh, and chewed through the seatbelt with nail clippers, yes I mentioned that…and husband is away, so children are firmly in charge instead of him.  Curiously they only want things that are not that bad for them, like eating soup for breakfast.  I like Atlantic City, the trashy beachiness and the surreality of the casino at three in the morning.  Also am enjoying my new basketball–it is a women’s size and, you know, whatever.  Did I mention that my Dad helps me find things when I lose them? Darn it! Almost made it through that disjointed paragraph.  James Thurber wrote some story, I think it was “The Man Who Hated Moonbaum,” but of course can’t check now to see if that story actually exists, in which one character describes another as coming apart like a cheap croquet mallet–I have always found that very felicitous.  No connection to anything, like me, that I need to mention.  Ahem.  Unless you are updated on recent events.

Big hugs to you, friend reader.