I live in the best state in the Union

Quiet spring day hike:



















...and after my glorious morning hike (4 miles), I puttered around Golden. Then I came home, and foolishly looked at email. Three work-related emails were there and each one irritated the hell out of me. I'll go post about it over on Sinus when the stream of expletives running in my head slow down to a dull roar.

I miss aspects of contract work. One of them was that you don't care about workplace politics, because it isn't your workplace and in X number of months, you'll be gone.

I am not going to allow this to ruin the next 48 hours until I have to be back at the hospital. I'm sitting on my patio, drinking tea. I am going to dink around on my computer awhile, and then I'm going to make more art. I will probably stay up doing so until 03 or so. Because I can.

And you know what? When I put it that way, it reminds me that I actually do love my life.

Enjoy the pictures of my beautiful state. Spring in Colorado, when you walk over the snowfields in a t-shirt. Love. It.

I am working.

I put this here not because it doesn't suck, but blogging helps me to keep motivated to work. My house smells of turpentine and it's fscking fabulous.



And this is ready to quilt:



My dioxazine purple tube and manganese violet are dried up. Dammit.

I just can't do it...

To continue my efforts to try and read these books a dear person from work loaned me:

...This is direct from The Return of Rafe MacKade, wherein Regan and Rafe have just had sex again. (There was another sex scene. I missed it with all the nebulous "shattering" and the looking at the dust motes and time...what was it? (JustCallMeJo refers to the text...) Time spinning out, stretching and quivering...time did that, yeah.

The worst part of this sex scene was the apparent afterglow. Let's take you direct to the text, where the drama is happening. Okay, so twentysomething bad, bad boy Rafe has just gotten it on, right? It's the next morning, and the little tartlet has gone to work. We turn to Rafe now, to see what's in dirty little Rafe's mind....

Scowling, he grabbed a shovel and began to deal with the snow that piled the walk. The sun was strengthening, and he worked fast, so that even with the bite of the northern wind he sweated satisfactorily under his coat.

She'd probably head straight for the shower, he mused, tossing heavy snow off the path. Wash that pretty doe-colored hair of hers.

He wondered what it looked like wet.

She'd dig some of those neat, classy clothes out of her closet. Nope, he thought, correcting himself. Regan would never dig. She'd select. Quiet colors, simple lines. One of those professional-woman's jackets, with a pin on the lapel.

She'd fix her face, nothing too obvious. Just hints of blush along the cheekbones, a touch of color above those ridiculously long lashes. Then lipstick -- not red, not pink, a kind of rose that accented those full lips and that sassy lttle mole beside them.


....

I didn't think you'd believe me with how bad it is unless I quoted direct from the book.

....

Because when a man leaves my bed, I want him to be thinking about my makeup the next morning.

I just. I can't continue this book. I just can't.

Creative stuff:

This is the first layer, so it's not real indicative of what the finished thing will look like.

I have no idea what the finished thing will look like. As usual with the first layer, I am displeased. (For perspective, I have never been pleased with the initial layer of any painting I've done.) (Mostly, I don't like any of them until 6 months after completion.)

I am posting it here so that I cannot just sit on it; I have to WORK and I'm posting to show progress.



I do like this little area, how the payne's grey leaks around the canvas texture (which, of course, I stretched). It's graphite-like, and water-colory drawingish as opposed to paitningish. My mentors always hated that about my oil painting. Pat used to clench her teeth every time she saw me go for the turpentine. "This is OIL PAINTING, JustCallMeJo, and you're using a WATERCOLOR technique. Why don't you paint with WATERCOLORS?" "Cos you tell me my watercolors are too heavy-handed and oil-painting like."

Oh well. It's my paintings and I win cos there is no painting police when you do it because you love it.

Anyway. Here is an area I like and will probably have to obliterate with other layers:



(If you look at it close up, yes that is a sternum on my paint table. A real one. Nicked it from my university's studio. That, and a human foot.) Here's my paintbox. With 83 tubes of paint in it. And other stuff I use:



This is the 2006 - 2007 quilt. I began the quilt I began as I was filing divorce papers. Had to have something on my bed that hadn't touched my ex-husband, so this was it. Colors that were bright, and yet flesh-toned, too, and warm. Something very different from the 2005 quilt I did, which was blues and blacks and reds and suited him. This was one I did to suit me. It has more quilting on it, more per inch, than any quilt I've ever done. 100% hand quilted. I have a before picture, from the sewing room in the house in Morrison (with Bella in the chair, supervising):



And the completed quilt:



I tried to get a closeup to show how much foogin work went into it. Bella was laying posing, so here she is again.



Incidentally, this Sunday is my two year divorce anniversary. And with this quilt done, it, and the "after" period which is always defined by it, is done. (If you're divorced, you know exactly what I mean by that.) As soon as I finished, I had this huge burst of energy and planned out five small quilts using a Bali star pattern, completed piecing, binding and sandwiching two wall hangings, got the backing finally for a whole-cloth quilt that's to be a gift, got almost halfway done hand-quilting a lap quilt for my folks for Christmas...

So here's some of that work goin on. It's a not so swell quality photo of a wall hanging that's ready for hand-quilting. It's gold and red koi. Kinda dig it.



There's a lighter colored version of it that is 70% done piecing.

And one of the Bali stars I'm process of piecing. It's a pattern I've done before, and the fabric is brown but has a food theme. Like mushrooms and corn and broccoli...I like the unusual colors for the theme, which is why I picked up some fat quarters of em.



I guess it's been a productive February.

Shakin off the funk. Ready for spring, still. But shakin it all off.

I smell like turpentine.

Paris, Day 3: the French laundromat, Very Important Museums and Jim Morrison's grave

I did just post today, and am procrastinating studying. And seeing as I CAN'T FREAKIN LEAVE MY HOUSE (see prev post), I will go back to unfinished Paris stories.

Recall that we are on Day 3 of Paris trip, which is day 13 or so of total trip. Am sick, which explains the tone in the beginning. Also, know that none of these photos from the museums do the real art ANY justice. Go see them yourself. Go.

AND I'M WEARING CLOTHES, I'LL HAVE YOU KNOW. --Ed.

laundromat on rue de Chenin Vert

I woke up homesick today. I laid in bed not looking forward to struggling with language. I wanted to go downstairs and say, "Pardon me, sir, but I have two strange insect-like bites on my arms and I am curious as to whether it is the work of bedbugs. As I lay awake last night because my skin itself was crawling with the thought and though my fear may be completely irrational as well as unfounded, I would regardless like to inquire as to whether there are other accomodations."

But my French is much more CroMagnon. Un = oooohn Vingt = Fawnnng

French is too much phlegm. I don't know why people think it's a beautiful langague. Too much nose, too much drool, too much spit.

I lay there in my bed, which may or may not have a bedbug infestation and thought about this. I looked under the matress and found no evidence of bugs. I pull up the sheet. I had no bedboard, but if I'd had one, I would have looked there, too. No bugs.

Since I had no proof whatsoever that the marks on my arms are bedbug bites, I decide that I am being a whiny bitch and should just get up for the day.

I still wanted bottomless cheap cuppa terrible coffee and a plate of eggs and unsnobby cheese and salsa and wheat toast at Pete's on Colfax. Maybe hashbrowns.

I want clean jeans. In my entire afternoon of shopping yesterday in the effort to avoid having to do laundry, I find nothing I'd wear. So. Laundry. Yay for me, there's one up the street.

So with my little dictionary, I look up words. I use my dizionario in Italia very little, because I have enough to get by and use context. In French, "charger" is "load" and "lessive" is "detergent". The detergent dispenser was too mysterious, and when I asked a nice woman who spoke no English how to use it, her expression said, "Oh, well, it looks busted." She gave me that Gallic shrug. The one that means everything and nothing. But she did shake her head and look at me with pity. Nicely.

Next adventure: buy detergent. There's a supermarche next door. Bien. I am armed with my dictionary. I find cleaning supplies. I don't really want a jug of detergent that I will use 50mLs of, so I go with the tablets, the smallest box (18 count). I stand in line with others, grumpy about the ...density...of personal space in Europe. Think about my egomaniacal manifest-destiny-space-sense of typical entitled American. Still think the person behind me needs to Step The Fuck Back. I pay. I have nothing smaller than a E20, so I shrug Gallicly and nicely. I feel evil and passive-aggressive doing so. I don't care.

Vado a lavanderia. Because I know how to say that without looking it up in Italian.

In the whatever the word for this damn place is in French, I find that I bought tablets with bleach.

Merde.

I will go back and beg to switch. I find tablets that I think are detergent and not simply the fabric softener. I look as piteous as I possibly can (not difficult). The checkout girl sees and recognizes me. I point to the word "blanc", printed plain as day and not in small print on the box I'd bought. I say, "j'ai coloeur" Actually, I said, "Zhyai koh-lurh" but pointing to my black socks made the point that my grunting likely did not.

She takes pity on me. Great! She said some words but the gestures said, "You want exchange?" I nod pathetically. She was kind. I pointed to the prices and gave her a dime. She called her supervisor, who was (I guess) needed to make the exchange.

A (dense of personal space) line behind me of no less than seven aging French women glower at me. The one behind me had the very best glower. She wore a caramel-and-cream colored fur coat, which matched her hair, that color of cornsilk old blonde. But the coat looked soft and furry and was probably beloved of some animal who grew it, and her hair was wiry and up in many bobby pins. Her large tortoiseshell glasses offset the saggy jowls and pinched lips.

I smiled sheepishly.

Dumb blonde American that I am. Who really just wants her lousy cuppa in a chipped Pete's mug. And who has no intention of EVER letting her hair go that color.

The supervisor arrived and I took my job at looking helpless very seriously. Rapid fire French ensued between them. I proffered my dime. I bowed in a little half-Namaste and said "Merci beaucoup."

Great! Back to the ...what is it....lavarie.

I put my clothes in #12 because it's my lucky number. I choose my temperature in Celsius...er...somethin less than 37 degrees cos that's people temperature...um...yeah, let's just pick B. I have enough Euro ofr a 7kg load. I have no idea how many kilos my clothes are, but it looks like it'll fit. I toss in the maybe detergent, maybe with fabric softener and I push button 12. And several other buttons on the washer for good measure. One of the buttons -- couldn't tell you which -- makes it go. I jump and clap. Look at my clothes getting all cleaned! Or at least fabric-softened!

I decide to get cafe, but not go far. Up the way is a boulain...whatever. Something bread. No coffee, but I choose un pain du chocolat and return with my treasure.

It is divine. Light and buttery and just enough but not too much chocolate. Flaky.

It is sublime. And I am thinking that this is what I came to Paris for. And you know what else? As I'm experiencing my laundry sturm and drang, I notice four young women doing sketches of the street. With 4 or 6B pencils. I think that Hemingway's Paris still exists. Toulouse-Lautrec's Paris is still here. It has Coca Cola now. And it's easier for a vegetarian to eat fine good Indian, Chinese, Mexican, Brazilian, Vietnamese, Thai, etc etc than to find a decent French meal. But.

This is Paris still.

So I will dry my clothes (or that's the plan) and seek out Toulouse-Lautrec.

********

The d'Orsay is very good. It houses Realism, Symbolism, Impressionism, (some) Post Impressionism, the Barbizon School, something they call Naturalism and three or four other movements that I probably had to know in art school, but which slides I slept through.

I saw Van Goghs and it pained me that Dancehall was not there with me. No, not Starry Night, but two of his self portraits, the portrait of the red-haired guy on the blue background, several landscapes, a handful of early works that are very interesting in terms of showing progression to a mature style. No sunflowers. I ached to have her see them. She should see them.

Saw another fucking haystack. Thank god there was only one. Monet. Bah.
Hey look, it's another fucking haystack:



That being said, I must admit that I appreciated a series he did of the Rouen Cathedral. The use of light was....okay, it was brilliant. I was impressed with the impasto surface texture, especially since the paintings (20" x 28" -- nothing to sneeze at) were done plein air. Okay, they were good. They were really good. Below is a flashless photo of terrible quality of some (okay) brilliant paintings by Monet:


The haystacks are still annoying. I am artsnobby about it.

And for the crowds of people, I wonder if five of them knew why those Rouen paintings were so good. Or if they're really looking in that five seconds apiece. I understand people who "don't get modern art". I like them better, because they're making the effort and LOOKING. That, I can work with.

I enjoyed the Renoir room. All fluffy bunny, but sophisticated use of color. Loved the Cezannes.

But the best for me were the Toulouse-Lautrecs, which Nancy Dancehall also would have loved. GOD, they were wonderful. Such confidence, even with a size 14 brush. The gestures were exceptional -- that little man may have drunk a lot of absinthe but when he wasn't drinking, he was drawing his knucklebones off. You don't get that good without work. Without solid, consistent studio time. ("Studio" can also mean cafe-sketching.) (Isn't art fantastic?) Amazing captured expressions of figures and very complex choices in color. Bold. Ballsy. I lay my pathetic brush DOWN for anyone who can pull off acid aqua on siena. He did it in a way that brought attention to the figure, completely pushing the gob of acid aqua into the background and this dude did it in the 1890s.


Da-umn. Above is a small detail from a 6' x 9'ish work on paper. I could not photograph anything in the room with the aqua blob, so you'll have to take my word for it.

One square centimeter can tell you how many parsecs you are from bein on those walls after you're dead.

I figure I'm about 12 away.

What blew me away most was a smallish (14" x 18") pastel on that rough brown bag stuff that was prevalent here at the time. Was among his Moulin Rouge best. Two figures in a bed -- all you could see was their sleeping heads. It was perfect. 1894. Their faces managed to capture hard living and the sweetness of oblivion of sleep and the utter fragility and transience of our relationships to each other. It wasn't a "whore and her john". It wasn't even this man and this woman. It was me and it was you and it was every person you've ever woken up next to at some point in time.

This link goes to the Musee d'Orsay website to view the image. I took a photograph of it, but the quality is of course, terrible. The quality of the online image is better, but nothing at all compared to what it is to stand before the work itself.

Le lit, 1894

Broke my heart and then filled it right back up again.

It hit the way those few works do...the Siquieros in Mexico City...the Pieta Rondanini in Milan...the Moses my first trip to Rome, anything by Remedios Varo. There are others. Works like that aren't simply the reason to make art. They are the reason to keep living at all. A gesture of something so human, so universal, so ...US and so TRUE that is perfectly comprehensible in one single image.

Just tore my heart right out and put something better back...something made of light and color and sound. Instead of my guts squishing in my ribcage, there's this incendiary brilliant thing that's so much larger than the space I have for it and I just....want to give that away.

Isn't that crazy?

This guy, this short little alcoholic French guy...he can do that with his hands across an ocean of space and time.

I don't think it was just me about this drawing, either. A British couple behind me also stood for awhile, considering it. She said, "Look at that -- the sweet sleep of a prostitute. Isn't it lovely?"

See? Wasn't just me.

LOVED. IT.

****

There was a Weegee exhibit in town, but the museum is ferme. Bummer. Love Weegee. Big influence on Duane Michals, who, of course, was a big and is a influence on my pithy little photography.


I got a E5 chocolat thing, and took a picture of it before I ate it ALL.

I have decided that any Parisian who looks at me sidelong for not speaking French returns to neutral if I speak Italian to them. It works.

**********

I'm at an Indian Tandoori restaurant. I'm still a little cranky, and tamarind chutney over samosas is ameliorating it beautifully.

The Rodin Museum was WONDERFUL. Huge space with massive, gorgeous gardens so you can fully appreciate his bronzes sitting on a bench. Small fountains, meticulous greenery. The rose gardens are still (in late Sept) blooming as large as my open hand. I smelled lots of them.


Rodin did many busts, too, and a lot of erotic sculpture. Who knew? (Not anyone who studied art in my Catholic college, I suppose.) I can see why he's regarded as such a French treasure...the man earned his acre of flowing gardens museum. Angelo he is not, but he doesn't want to be. These are modern figure sculptures. My view had been that after Angelo (and Donatello before him), figure sculpture was done. Angelo said all that could have been said about it. I might be wrong in this, now that I've seen Rodin. It has the emotion of Donatello. Most of Angelo's sculptures are modeled after the classical era and are therefore stoic in both upper- and lower-case use of the word. Nothing about Rodin is stoic or Stoic, it is all profoundly Romantic.

Poor bastard had to have read Rousseau and Rimbaud. (French guys.) Speaking of hell (A Season in Hell, Rimbaud), his Gates of Hell were fascinating. Interesting bookend to Ghiberti's doors I just saw again last week. There's Lucifer at the top, in the same pose as the Thinker and all these babies cryin and demons falling and humans screaming. And people kissing. Curious. Again, I wished Bex had been with me. She would have totally dug it.

After Rodin, I headed back to Pere Lachaise. It seemed silly to be so close and not go visit Jim Morrison's grave. Beautiful cemetery. Once again, I find myself in a cemetery and have no charcoal or paper for rubbings. You might be mildly surprised how often that can happen to a girl like me.

I thought of Aaron, of course, for the usual list of reasons. He would have loved it and I wonder if he'd been there. I know he doesn't go to Graceland anymore (cemetery in Chicago, no relationship to Elvis). I haven't been back, either.

No grass in Pere Lachaise as the monuments -- not graves -- are piled atop each other, all in different dates. I was in an area with nothing older than 1750, and as recent as 2004. Some monuments has filigree stonework that echoed Milan's Duoma. Some were plain black slabs that shone in the September rain. I took a lot of photos and missed Aaron terribly. I could have walked another hour or two, even with just my crappy E5 umbrella.


I went to Jim Morrison's grave, because it was the mecca of it that interested me. I like the Doors as much as anybody, but I'm hardly a devotee. A small cluster of the faithful were huddled on the ground. Some had umbrellas, some just had iPods. We were all quiet. The monument itself is fairly plain, 1943 - 1972? 71? It is surrounded by barriers, though an armful or three of flowers managed to grace the grave. The mausolea around the grave had been obviously scrubbed clean, but years of carved graffiti was still eviden. People still write upon them.

"We still ride the snake with you, Jim!"

Jim's ridin some worms right now, buddy. I'm sorry, was that disrespectful? Well, I didn't say it out loud. Everyone was quiet.

Some guy in a pageboy cap and jean jacket; I'd say about 40, was standing nearby, sniffling. He rolled himself a joint.

I smiled. It was time to go. I saw what I'd stopped by for.

I went back to the hotel to crash. Off to the Eiffel Tower tonight.

Things that suck

Things that suck about being a girl:

So, my sister leaves my house tonight/today round midnight. She's coming to the end of her semester, and has lab writeups to do. I have exactly three non-working and non-parental-units-present days before my ICU exam. So we listened to Christmas music, studied and had pizza.

She left my condo round midnight. My condo is in a theoretically safe and boring neighborhood. The cars are in the alley behind me. My windows are visible from the alley, and of course, are lit all night long, even when I'm working. Usually, the blinds are up. Because I don't think anything about it.

So Nancy Dancehall goes downstairs to her car, all 4 foot 11 of her, with her bio books and her laptop and there's some guy dressed all in black loitering out in the alley behind my place. Did I walk her out? No, cos I live in a safe and boring condo. She gets into her car, locks it, starts it up and all, and he stands there two feet away, saying nothing and trying (and succeeding) in being intimidating. She stares him down for that critical amount of time that says, "I can identify you in a lineup."

She gets home safe; she calls me. "Don't, say, go take out the trash at three in the morning or something." Which is a good thing that she tells me this because I do shit like that all the time. She has the willies. So do I. I will not be allowing her or any of my girlfriends to walk to their cars alone again.

Side diatribe
Something that Shawn and I used to fight about was that I am really lazy about wearing clothes in my own home. (Unless somebody's over. Then it depends on the somebody.) I wear some clothes. Like socks. ( = habit from winter Chicago hardwood floors.) It's just that sometimes I wear jeans and a bra and socks and sometimes I wear a chemise or whatever and socks. (Very sexy, I'm sure.)

Point is, it's my home, why wear clothes I don't want to wear?

Shawn had a hissy fit over this habit. "Somebody could be looking in!" I never got his logic. If I'm sayin I'm loyal to you, I am. The end. What's the neighbor checkin me out got a thing to do with that? Is this about you and me or is this about you? Or the fact that you're cheating on me and you're only living in this house because I cannot bear to part with your children yet. And you're thinkin that everybody is as much of an asshole as you are, and how easy it would be for me to return the favors you've done me and just wander next door. Except. I am not an asshole. Even when you are.

I don't look at it that way. Some chick checkin my man out? If he's with me and I have no cause to doubt that (cause = observing said Mr. Man fucking some chick in tawdry Littleton bar parking lot), I take it as a compliment to me, too. On my good taste. I sit there like a happy cat who's just eaten a canary and think, "Mine." So I'm all about the monogamy. And turf. Am just not a crazy person about it. Either there's trust there or we are kidding ourselves and what good is that?

So let em go whack off, what's it to me or to you? That's a worry for their significant other, not us. Right?

Anyway, I still hold that I'm right, but it was a stupid thing to fight over. So I just did as he asked rather than fight over something stupid. We had unstupid things to fight about, (like said tawdry Littleton bar parking lot scene).

It was one of the first habits that got reversed in his absence. So.

Yeah. Maybe not the best plan to not care about the blinds.

.... dammit.

I don't pay attention to passersby passing by. I care about creepy person in alley who might also be watching and then menacing my sister.

Back to the initial topic
I don't like fear. I don't live like a woman who could be hurt very badly by the world, and who can't conceive of going camping or hiking by herself if she gets the inclination. Or one who can't be out all night at her Chicago coffeehouse and go home when she feels like it. Or drives hundreds of miles in open desert. I don't own a gun, I don't want one. I have never taken a self-defense class. I've been mugged once, and I elbowed and kicked and hollered at several thousand decibels...and got away. I know. It was lucky. I just hate thinking about that.

Just yuck.

I don't like bein a girl some days.

Now here I am at home, feeling caged. Not like I need to take the trash out, but I don't think I can right now and that is the point.

My sister is home safe thank god. With a huge case of the willies.

Now I feel like a) I gotta start pulling my blinds b) I'm gonna call my landlady in the morning and get her to persuade our local police officers to start driving by in that alleyway and c) ...I can't not come and go at night.

dammit.

just.


dammit.