shakti and the midges

As I mentioned, I had the good fortune to be taken to a migratory bird refuge north of Salt Lake City- literally an 80,000 acre of asylum in the middle of the desert. The birds there make the air breathe and they are brave and ravenous. Every one of these birds comes to be nourished before they're gone; some stay on for a while, others just blow through, but no one stays permanently. So I thought it was a perfect setting to give up and be nourished. There happened to be a midge hatch- a lunacy of bugs so heavy it bent the grass. These bugs do not bite do not even have jaws. But they serve as a kind of living energetic scrub- you move through the clouds of them and emerge feeling more awake and aware (and a little put off.) I made myself stand near them. Uncomfortable at first (the way I feel with any act of receiving,) and then more at peace and finally completely stilled. It was rocky and disorienting at first. Like that idea of inhaling and exhaling equally: when I make my inhale equal to the exhale it has always been somewhat unpleasant. A strange thing to be so thrown off by one's own breath... But I'm sipping a little at a time, readying myself to let It in. Whatever It might be.


 

rifts

H and I spend summers apart. It's ok. We stretch ourselves to gauze, aching across many thousands of miles and then homecoming, like a comet, smashes the world apart with light. Sometimes this is the best part of the year, but during the actual time everything feels abstracted and thin.

I save myself by writing letters, maybe he is saved by them. For me, loading all of my words and pictures into an anonymous blue box and knowing it will sit unassuming on a communal table, winking and shivering until he picks it up, is gleeful.

And sometimes I really like to look back through what I've made. It doesn't feel like Work with a formal W. But it is shockingly relevant to that word, which is odd. For love.

but really

Whew!
But really.

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When I was at the age, I had a diary. I didn't keep it very long because of diary-guilt- you know, where you  come back to the diary after letting it digest its contents quietly and you feel so terrible? "I'm so sorry I've just left you here!" That commitment was difficult so I ditched the effort. It wasn't until RISD (well, more accurately, CCAC,) that I realized a sketchbook is a different deal. It waits with inexhaustible patience and this is the kind of light that really matters. And somehow, after time away, you can't wait to get back to it. No one's feelings hurt.

So maybe that's what's happening here. But anyway. Speaking of sketchbooks, some pictures here. Old ones, new ones - mostly old ones.

on dilemmas

on dilemmas, and how they might wind and crank the mind:

lines and strokes

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brushstrokes

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i go in and out of putting down words and images. lately words have abounded. and suddenly, now color and shape and line and space and the like.

thoughts

treks

a jaunt up into the Wasatch wilds with mum the other day. thoughtful of our busy itinineraries these last few weeks the wildflowers have bided their time and waiting to burst into delirious bloom until now. (well...to be frank, the mountains and they're literal late blooming tendencies demand anyone who wishes to see wildflowers wait until late July at which point they are cut short only by the first killing frost or snowstorm. such a fleeting life up there.)

lovely views (if somewhat cut short by an abundance of flies) and much sun blinding and pounding over all.

more color than usual on the bridge of the nose and the cheeks which resulted in the thoughts below...

opening and all

so a few good things! firstly, School decided they would take me furnishing me with an electronic mail, a physical letter, a list of candidates willing to talk to me about the glamorous life of a PhD candidate and a rather solemn and overwhelming course listing for the coming year. now we have two We'll Take You! letters pinned up on the fridge next to the animal hospital magnets, the fancy beer caps, the Important Drawings and the pictures of a rather boozy two of us at a wedding two years ago. all in all it's shaping up to be a top notch refrigerator display.

secondly an Opening that featured myself and a stranger (Steve Larson is his proper name but we've never met.) the reception was well-turned-out and the little pins kept everything as it should be, more or less flat, against the wall.

details below...

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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