Bones

Somehow, in collecting the images for my 2010 sketchbook (“jackets, blankets & sheets”) — many of D. sleeping, many of a landscape blanketed in white — a little bit of a story emerged.

It’s about a boy who breaks his arm twice, which prevents him from doing what he loves best and makes him question his luck. It includes a winter full of blizzards. There are references to the way that relationships can pull us through a dark season. And questions about destiny and fate emerge.

Mostly, I had fun making this.

Over the winter, partly because of D’s broken bones, the boys and I discovered calcium powder packs. We poured the pink dust into our ice water in the mornings and felt virtuous chugging it down. This phrase, “BONES, YOU’D BE PRETTY FLOPPY WITHOUT THEM,” came from the side of the box.  I doubt I would have even noticed it, were it not for the work-in-progress.

 

One of the things I love about collage is the way that repeating and colliding images that are at hand always generate surprises.

I like the spine of the notebook making another (initially unintentional) reference to bones. In the complete drawing of the befuddled-looking boy (from a book illustrated by Carolyn Haywood), he is staring staring at a chair with a jacket on it, which is how it ended up in these pages.

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A dark surround

The rest of the room acting as frame for that one patch of light. . .  Darkness as a way of seeing.

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Mint and catalpa – shining

Rain continues. Blue stone shines.  Water gathers in bowls and on the bigger leaves. Boys sleep. It’s official – school’s out. It’s official – Whitey Bulger is in custody (I went to law school with his niece). Big news in these parts, of course.

Woke to that news but slept through the draw down speech (I TRIED to stay awake).  I was riveted by the top twenty’s second round of dancing, though, of course.  What does this say about me? That I’m turning into my mother, I suppose. (time to subscribe to ‘People’ and ‘Cosmo’!)   But here’s a brag – or, at least, an observation of the next generation carrying on – C. has begun reading The New Yorker (now I have to compete with him AND K. for the latest issue?!!).

What can I say a 100% YES to today?

Not the mammogram. Or emailing clients to schedule appointments. MAYBE making dinner (it was NOT ‘literally’ the best Caesar salad last night — made a much better one when guests from Denver were here). So, what, then? What?

To the catalpa blossoms scattered like a beautiful, ornate kind of snow. Their delicacy… their profusion. Their reminder of time’s relentless passage (in three days’ time they will brown and begin to stink).  Yes to change? Yes to beauty that requires clean up?!!

Speaking of change and its relentless march – how about ‘YES’ to C. driving D. to the orthodontist today (?!@!).

Yes.  Especially yes because I will be at work.

Another brag – the first thing C did – on his very first solo drive – was to go and get a job.  YES!! Then run and get a work permit.  How about that?!!  Helped to mitigate the freak-out-factor (Thank you DM for sharing my pride and adding: “You’ll be okay”).

Jack needs a bath.

I want a YES for today that is all my own.

I’m in love with Danny Gregory’s journal from Rome.  Check it out.

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June Rain

A disconsolate rain falling.  June rounding the bend.  Summer now.

Experiment – instead of saying to self, “I’m so tired…”, say, “I’m so aware…”  Some days that turns into:  “I’m so aware of being tired”!  But other days, colors pop or I soften, just a tad.

The too much-ness of things – a friend’s poor health, C. getting his license, the tenured paralegal leaving just as a summer schedule was opening with breathing-space.  Rain.

The garden has thrived this year.  Is EVERYTHING because of global warming?  The stress of the weird winter, I heard, has made the plants push into overtime.  Makes sense to me.  The result?  Glorious.  A profusion of iris, sun drops, pansies in all their cheerful displays.

The ‘big quilt’ is progressing.  A batik-splurge in Schenectady this past weekend will help me resolve some of the last problem areas (too much red on the right, not enough swirly patterning mid-bottom).

I love to share in-the-moment pictures on this blog – as if these entries were like food – better by being seasonal and fresh.  But constraints of all kinds have me willing to upload some older shots.  I plan to get the whole sketchbook up eventually.  Here it is, very early on.

For THIS year’s project, I chose the theme – “PATH THROUGH THE WOODS”.

Time to make “literally the best Caesar Salad” (just caught up on this season of Parks n’ Rec) and pasta.  I sure hope the speech about drawing down the troops in Afghanistan doesn’t trump ‘Dancing with the Stars’.

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