May Day

May Day, May Day! The speed in which this year is progressing is troubling to me. Especially when I consider my lack of anything to show for the past four months. I did finish my triptych but as with most of my work, it must not be viewed for several weeks. In those weeks I forget all difficulty and disappointment I experienced during the process and make peace with the result. But, ever the optimist and lover of new beginnings, I am stepping boldly into May with fresh ideas and the hope of nicer weather.

I watched the wedding and loved the hats

Parting is such sweet sorrow...

It is with some hesitancy I say, I do believe my previous sketchbook is complete! Therefore, I've moved on to a new tome, full of clean white pages. Happily, the sticky notes decided to come with me.

PS...Happy Birthday Mr. Shakespeare!

things i have learned in the past 24 hours

saying no is a skill to be cultivated
single ladies must watch out for moronic jerks
jaw dropping statements are just that
you're never too old to have your feelings hurt
i have a posse of good friends, some of whom i'm related to
and to them i say,

What I did on my spring time vacation

One thing I had hoped to 'get to' during the visit to my hometown last week was updating my website. Under another set of circumstances I might say, regretfully I wasn't able to get to that task, but the truth is, I had a remarkable and bustling time and don't regret a moment. But dear reader do not think my time in Michigan was in the least bit unproductive. Not only did I participate in a flurry of organizing, mending, cleaning, meandering, chitchatting, chewing the fat and shooting the breeze, I also diddled in my sketchbook. So while my website remains hopelessly, nay embarrassingly, out of date, my current sketchbook, once unremarkable, has provided me with much fodder for future work. And isn't that one of the goals for time away?

Dreams are only interesting to the people who have them

For most of my adult life I've had a recurring dream. I suspect many people have this dream, or a variation thereof. In my dream I'm a student and I find myself panic stricken as I realize it's the end of the semester or the school year, there's an impending exam and I haven't attended the class or cracked a book all year. Overwhelming anxiety plagues me until I awake, my heart racing, and after a few disoriented seconds, I am relieved to discover it was all just a dream. I'm spending a week in the town where I grew up, so that may be why I had a variation of this dream the other night. In this episode...
I was my present self, (only with pink hair) traveling happily through life when suddenly I was overcome with the realization that I had never graduated from high school. Once again I was panic stricken as I wrestled with the knowledge that I attended college, (several colleges as a matter of fact) married, raised children and held a variety of jobs, all without the benefit of a high school diploma. Some might have considered this feat quite an accomplishment, but what I experienced was a sense of foreboding and overwhelming guilt. Therefore, my pink-haired, dream-self felt compelled to come clean, and decided to march herself to the high school guidance counselor's office to make a confession.
It was St. Patrick's Day (everyone was wearing green and sporting squirt guns) the day I bravely walked to the school to turn myself in. As I entered the doors (the ones between the gym and the cafeteria) I had to navigate a gauntlet of students and friends, all dressed in green, pelting me with water from their squirt guns. The walk to the guidance counselor's office was excruciatingly long, the hallway seemingly endless. I sheepishly made my confession, only to learn I had been mistaken, I actually had graduated from high school! As she sat there my pink-haired, dream-self felt, not relief or comfort, but a miserable sense of let-down and regret.

When I awoke from this episode my heart was not racing. No, this time my heart felt heavy with
the thought that my dream-self had lived all those years carrying around so much unnecessary guilt.

In the days following, the feelings conjured up by this dream stuck around like gum on my shoe.
And just like my dream-self, I felt compelled to do something about it. So, today I decided to retrace the steps of my dream by taking a long walk to my alma mater. As it turned out, the school district is taking its spring break this week so after arriving at the high school I could only peer through the windows of the doors between the gym and the cafeteria. I couldn't do my 'dead man walking' imitation down the long hall to peek into the guidance counselor's office. So I roamed around the empty parking lot, thinking about my dream and the years between high school and now, and I snapped a few pictures with my phone. But walking along the memory-laden sidewalks leading to my high school, roaming around the empty parking lot, and peering in the school windows was cathartic nonetheless. I felt lighter somehow; less stickiness on my shoes. And, on the walk back to my folk's house I found myself wondering: now that this dream, recurring and unresolved for so many years, has finally reached a conclusion of sorts, now that my subconscious seems to have finally unearthed some of the feelings that may have inspired it in the first place, will I ever have this dream, or one of its variations, again? Has all that guilt and anxiety and regret been laid to rest or will it only resurface in some other dream scenario? I'll keep you posted, but only if you're interested.

The sidewalk leading to my high school

The doors between the gym and the cafeteria

My alma mater

I could use more of these...

Many hands make light work. Idle hands are the devil's workshop. The hands that help are far better than the lips that pray. Hand me that bottle. Second hand rose. All hands on deck. Lend a hand. Clean hands, pure heart. Hand it over. Don't bite the hand that feeds you. Under-handed. Don't let the right hand know what the left hand is doing. Melts in your mouth, not in your hands. I wanna hold your hand. The hands of time. In good hands.

a breakthrough?

Okay, what if these images of conjoined individuals are the result of my subconscious working through the dilemma/struggle I face, trying to balance my work (and passion) as an artist and the (fiscally) necessary work I must do as a church-lady office worker? omg! And there was no psychiatrist's couch or years of analysis needed! Of course, these drawings could be the result of a seriously flawed psyche which might benefit with a few years of analysis...nah.