My favorite painting by Matisse.

 

There is no doubt that Matisse is my favorite painter of the moderns and that includes anybody who came after. I love Picasso, Chagall, and Van Gogh as much, but not many other artists interest me as much as the post expressionists. Instead of ordering a copy of this painting, I am going to paint my own copy. Smiling. I am ending this month, feeling accomplished and ready to tackle my new goals set for July. 

I have so much to do. I sincerely hope and live in possibility that I will get as much work, if not more, done this coming month.

Art makes me happy. I am always interested in color. That is my thing. So it's no surprise that post expressionism is my thing.

Summer is full of color. 

Another June summary on the state of USA and perhaps world politics.

In the 19th Century, we did not have the uniformity that we experienced as a nation under the Great Depression and WWII and the growth of the 1950s. Simply put, it did not exist in our great experiment of democracy and diversity. People can argue this all they want, but cognitive scientists and others know that our coherence lay in other directions. (We have always moved toward fairness) Even our Civil Rights Movement in the USA has changed from the philosophies of Martin Luther King which relied on common-humanity identity politics. 'Common interests' was the 'key' in the majority of the 20th century as we faced wars and the Great Depression, and the great changes of becoming world leaders. These values began a decline with the entrenchment of certain trends (I will not label them now) that began on both the Left and Right side of political challenges beginning in the 1970s. 

By 2014, all of this was really over in more ways than I can discuss right now because each trend is its own discussion and this is a general statement about me and a brief summary of where politics are.  Right now, we are fragmented by common enemies, public shaming, and the idea that feelings are more important than reasoning. We are living a battle between what people perceive as "Good people versus Bad people." I am sure there are bad people in the world. I am sure some people need shaming. I am sure that feelings are important. That's NOT what I am writing of here. I am talking of an abuse of power by both sides. "Both sides" is even considered an abusive term these days. And I can see why from social media. Because some of us, including me, feel like we are fighting for our very lives. And we are, especially with Climate Crisis, which seems to be too overwhelming for our economies to challenge. But that won't stop stormy weather or the eventual collapse of many things.

It is true that the Republican Party in the USA has moved so far to the Right that it is willing to discount truth and morality in favor of power and appeasing a political base that has lost its way because of the great changes our society is facing. The sins of the far Left are not as damaging although they do damage, a damage that is hurting young people and will no doubt influence the future in negative ways. Some of this could get really bad. 

And this is where I stand. An outsider with no tribe at all. 

Well, I was an outsider with no tribe at all in high school (perhaps even by the third grade when I challenged many things) so I am emotionally prepared to not be liked or understood or valued and that's okay. I value myself, and am in spite of what I know in my head, a contented human being.

People are complex organisms. They are emotionally gray, meaning most do not rely on black and white thinking all the time. But the truth is, human beings are made for tribalism. It's in our DNA. It's evolution. But we have evolved and we have tools to mitigate the discord and misery that tribalism can do. And right now, we are high in tribalism on both sides over all sorts of things. And it's creating a storm that some will not weather. 

I always err on the side of fairness. I always err on the side of kindness for the weak and powerless when I can. I admit I can be wrong and I can lose my temper and when I do, get out of the way. But that's childish.

This statement is about the fact that I will no longer participate in anything I feel that drags us downward into a social war for power where it is a zero sum game, be it politically or socially, and that includes all identity politics. Common enemy ideology is cruel and can lead to some of the most horrible outcomes ever.  Public shaming and cancel culture are forms of it. Cognitive scientists know this. It would not be used in CBT at all. In fact, this is what Hitler used. And I see people on social media using it all the time. Maybe they are not aware, but some of them are very aware and have chosen it as a tool to fight for justice. And this is where we are at socially.

I can't support that any longer. It would be definitely going backwards socially. And while it might have temporary results, the long arc will be damaged. And I support the big picture, always. Also, I find that it would be akin to selling my soul for the comforts of status on social media, and I can't do that. Since 2014, and that is the year I have chosen for demarcation, I have witnessed cruelties, I have even participated in them. And most of it has been done on social media. Not all.

Last year, 2021, I faced myself with what I know are certain truths, about myself, my country, and fate of the future. I did not do this likely but with a lot of reading, research, thinking, and even asking others for help. And this is where I am now. And where I choose to live my life.

Another summary from June's reading.

“This absence of literary culture is actually a marker of future blindness because it is usually accompanied by a denigration of history, a byproduct of unconditional neomania. Outside of the niche and isolated genre of science fiction, literature is about the past. We do not learn physics or biology from medieval textbooks, but we still read Homer, Plato, or the very modern Shakespeare.”
                 

                              — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

June always.....

“Green was the silence, wet was the light, the month of June trembled like a butterfly.”

— Pablo Neruda

I need to make a June summary.

 Wow, I don't even know how to summarize such a beautiful month that has been full of pains and errors and joys and delights and so much beauty and possibility. And I've worked very hard.

FOR one thing, it's been an incredibly hot June, above average temperatures, some days so hot it was impossible to really go out after 1 pm. Heat indexes were always triple digits. I got up and walked most mornings by 6:30 and then I spent the rest of the hours until about 11:30 working in the garden and flowerbeds.  I saved the afternoon and early evenings for writing. There were days I had to take off. I dehydrated badly a few times and paid the price for that with muscle spasms in my legs. My doctor told me I was over exercising and probably could not drink enough no matter what. How strange the human body is. I am stronger than I have been in ten years, but I have challenges to that strength. I have certain things that are happening to me because of age and I have to pay attention. Another aspect is that I was basically hauling a lot of dirt myself and that's new to me. Before there was always someone who moved the bags of dirt, mulch, and etc. for me. Now I have been hauling that around in my small garden wagons, etc. I feel good about this but it is a lot of work and rebuilding the flowerbeds has been a daunting task. I am not even finished. It will take me ALL SUMMER to achieve this.

I did have a beautiful birthday. I even had cake. And I bought a gorgeous bottle tree from the guy in Sunflower MS (very significant and sentimental thing) and lots of blue bottles as the gift for myself. All my children were extremely kind and generous, and so was Haylee and the boys. My neighbors, etc. Such a wonderful birthday.

The only thing I regret about June is that I have not went swimming yet.

Besides all this, I've written some lovely pages, read some great books, and been to the local Malco to see a movie. 

And Joey finally moved in, which is also a really happy event. I've been totally alone for over three years now and it's nice to have someone in the house besides the furniture and cat.

The flower above was a surprise. It's one of my beautiful rose mallows and it popped up unexpectedly, and now has a full bloom. Come fall, I'll dig it up and divide carefully and replant in another flowerbed. In some ways, June surprised me, too. I love summer and I have thrived, even in this heat. I have done more work. Been happier even though I have a clear head about what is going on in the world.

Special things. Placebo is touring and Brian Molko is as wonderful as ever on stage. Of course, he's mercurial by nature. I am not going to Texas to see Placebo, a decision I made final last week. Several reasons for that decision. The only other venue is Chicago. Riot Fest. I think not. I've pretty much given up on the idea of ever seeing a live performance of Placebo outside YouTube. Laughing.

Things I love about June. The beautiful moons, the heat, the long days and shorter nights, the day lilies, swimming, the sound of lawn mowers, the smell of barbecue in the neighborhood air, the color green, the afternoon thunderstorms. My birthday is the first day of June. I always have cake. I love cake but only have it occasionally. June is my favorite month out of the year. It often reminds me of the girl I was, the wild flower, my childhood days. Happy days.

White hardy hibiscus has been assailed by insects.

 Of all the plants I have in my garden, it is the hardy hibiscus that is always endangered. Sure I lose annuals and certain perennial daisies from the heat, but the hardy hibiscus dies from insect hunger. I have lost as many hibiscus as tea roses and in the humid South, that says a lot. Tea roses are mere annuals here. The humidity and black spot destroys them. INSECTS destroy hibiscus. This year, this organic gardener has decided to fight back with Sevin, probably the kindest of the seriously dangerous insecticides. It is not a pleasant choice. And I have waited and waited, and used everything else possible to save these gorgeous plants that I so love. This plant is located in the back/north lawn. The ones located in the front/south lawn are facing extinction. They look bad. They are suffering. It's liquid, ready to spray Sevin so I won't poison myself too. I wrote that gardeners are optimistic people, pragmatic too. If I were younger and had more days, I'd not have these plants. But I am not young anymore and my days are short and precious and I want them. So I am going to use Sevin and kill the insects and possibly poison a bee. Decision made.

Are we allowed to make mistakes, are we allowed to speak even when wrong, are we allowed to learn and do better?

"What I tend to see happening more and more is people retreating into their own corners. People seem scared to get things wrong or be shouted at so they form villages in which they agree with every other member, and maybe they go out and shout at the people in the next village for fun, but there’s no interchange of ideas going on. I think we have to encourage the idea that you’re allowed to think things. I have thought a great many stupid things over the years, and I can tell you that there’s not one stupid thing that I ever thought where I changed my mind because someone shouted at me or threatened to kill me. On the other hand, having great discussions with good friends, possibly over a drink, has definitely changed my mind and made me try to do better. You’re allowed to do better, but we have to let people do better."

— Neil Gaiman

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec “The Cartwheel”,1893.

Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec “The Cartwheel”,1893.

This rose mallow is my favorite flower.

 

Summer arrives.

 

When summer officially arrives in the Deep South, the daylily reigns. I have a goal of planting several new breeds before summer is over. This and phlox is a my dream, to just have beds full of them. Smiling. I love summer. When I was very young, I lived in a swimsuit all summer long. We swam in rivers and lakes, in the local towns' pools. I think I learned to swim in my grandmother's bathtub. She had one of those big claw-footed things and the water was deep enough for a toddler to swim. Later, my mother sent me off to swimming lessons. Both my parents spent a lot of time on lakes, boating and fishing and that sort of thing and felt swimming was a natural thing. These daylilies are from my mother's yard. It was her favorite flower, considering she had thousands of them in her garden. This is the longest day of the year, June 21 or so, depending. Summer solstice. Every day now on will get shorter and shorter, the countdown to the shortest winter day. But I won't think about that right now. Summer is here, full of warmth and color and so much beauty.

Bob Dylan - Hurricane (1976)

One of my all time, favorite songs. "Songs that Shaped Me thread." I am a big fan of Dylan. He's a genius. I so remember the first time I heard this song. It's an entire story, based on a true story of the boxer, Hurricane.

Jane's Nursery

 This is my cool corner of the garden where I sit a lot and also store all the plants that right now, I HAVE NOT PLANTED. Some eighteen single plants and five flats of smaller ones. It's 10 degrees cooler here than any other part of the yard and shaded. I was late watering today. I got up later than usual and then the Att tech was at my door, working on the wifi for the second day in a roll. He did repair the line, in more than one place, all found by another tech the previous day. That poor tech, it took him over three hours to find the problems. And it was 105 F degrees outside. I want some more ferns. Laughing.  Unlike most people, I love the heat, not quite this hot, but I tolerate it better than most. I don't run my A/C lower than 78 all summer. It's the cold that bothers me. I could live in the tropics, well I do I guess, because Mississippi is hot in the summer and fall and it's humid. I also have spent a lot of time in southern Louisiana. What can I say? I am a summer girl. If I had a pool, I would be swimming.

My zen moments are always in the garden, an update post.

 

After John died, I had to go to a mental health facility for a few days. Within ten years, I had experienced 6 major deaths, my son's marriages, a divorce among one of those, and the unexpected birth of a grandchild whom I had to care for. I had also quit writing. Add to this trauma the fact that I had torn two disks in my back, L4 and L5 while caring for John who chose to die at home and one can wonder how I even had the chance to process any of this. I think in some ways, I was just emotionally exhausted by it all and losing John was so painful that I thought I would not know how to live. That kind of depression is a bad place to be. Looking back, I am still haunted by some of those memories. And I have to look.

While at the facility, where they forced me to eat and attempt to sleep, I attended an art therapy class and saw a trauma specialist. Both were good for me and interconnected in that each asked about where I found myself happy at all. The answer was in my garden, doing the work. I call these my zen moments, where I lose myself and can completely empty my mind. One doesn't achieve this kind of mindfulness overnight. I began gardening when I was a very young girl and this habit of "not thinking anything" developed then. It was erratic but by the time I experienced all these stressful events later in life, I had mastered gardening into zen moments aka mindful meditation. You become nothing really, you think nothing, you lose ambition and even desire. What I notice in these moments are my breathing or the action of my body and a sense of calm. Even when I break the more meditative moments and say, talk to myself about the action (planting something, weeding something, clipping something, searching for an insect something) I am calm and detached from the world. It's not like hyper focus at all, because it's not fueled by the desires or anxiety often attached to focusing as in writing or painting or playing music. It's as though I have left me and joined nature.

After John's death and fallout, I could actually summon my special garden space and calm myself, even when I failed to be meditative as zen, even when I was full of anxiety or under the weight of depression. The color of my mind is always yellow in these moments. Yellow for the sun. Yellow for flowers. Yellow is my happy color. It seems silly, but trust me, it's not.

TODAY, I worked four hours in the garden and did the things I felt were best for a day that was going to turn 115 heat index. I finished before the heat arrived and took this photo around 10:30 in the morning. Everything got water soaked because this week is going to be very hot. I washed the patio furniture, cushions, pillows, etc. I cleaned out the potting shed. Put out some mulch, planted some Carolina jasmine (yellow). Despite the growing heat, there was a strong breeze in the first three hours. Felt nice. I took a break at 8 and hydrated, sitting under a tree. Lots of shade. Nature always amazes me. The beauty of it. How we manipulate it, too. I like the sounds of nature. I hear birds everywhere and I have three bird baths which I filled with water. I think a crow watches me, because I usually work in the garden in the morning and there is crow sound, very distinctive. But I can't see it for the trees. I didn't have any bird seed. Much buy soon.

Other update, Joey (youngest son) is coming to live with me for a bit. He needs to buy a car. He'll have to use my car for work until he gets one, which will be awkward but doable in a temporary way. It will be strange having Joey in the house since I am now very used to living alone. But he will be working mostly. I'll just have to figure out how to make plans to use my own car when he's off work. Again, awkward now but not impossible. Joey was in a relationship and now the relationship is over and they are splitting. Actually the split happened last year and they have been sharing a house and car despite the split. Now it's become unbearable. No way Joey can afford both a car note and rent at same time. Oh, well.

Without memory, what are we?

'What you remember saves you.' — W. S. Merwin

Disappointment hurts.

“What hurts so bad about youth isn't the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It's the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.”

               ― Mary Karr

Try Better Next Time - Placebo (2)

“Try Better Next Time for me is very much my song about the environment. You know, it’s a disillusioned, disappointed song. It’s very disappointed in humanity. It’s basically saying, good riddance, humanity, try better next time, you know, next time you come back and get a chance to live on this beautiful planet, you know, try better. It’s a story about people who live underground, about growing fins and going back to the water. It’s a very disillusioned song about the climate disaster presented in a sort of three minute Weezer ish kind of pop punk thing. If you dig deeper, it’s one of the more disturbing songs because it’s talking about an extinction event next, you know, the extinction of human beings, but is presented in in in an extremely jolly, upbeat happy, catchy way which is something that we do quite well, present something quite depressing in an upbeat fashion.”

                      — Brian Molko

Francesca Woodman Update June 2022

 Someone asked me the other day (not the first person) would I do a detailed sketch and summary of all the materials I have been reading and studying on Francesca Woodman. It's a nice thought, but it's a lot of work to recap my reading notes and then type them up into a prepared form for a blog. If anyone truly looks at my blog, they would realize that it's just really scattered notes, mainly written for my grandchildren, a kind of digital scrapbooks of marginalia, ideas, paintings, quotes, an assemblage is what I would call it and have called it. 

I've finished four additional books on Woodman since fall 2021, and I really haven't thought on how to organize my notes on the books or individual photos, but I will do that and see if I can come up with a plan. I don't think there is any one individual site dedicated to the photographer but the Woodman Trust on Instagram, and while that's the source to go to, it lacks contemplation. Simply put, there is not much discussion on the photos.

I think it should be quite obvious to people at this point that Francesca Woodman was a genius, that even in her youth, she had developed some mature skills and perspectives on her own work. That despite her pathology at the end of her short life, she had the needed objectiveness that goes with good art.

She is a fascinating figure to me for several reasons. One, she was working in the early 1970s, a time when my friends and I were also working in photography, though we were all younger than she. She also used low light, and very little materials to compose her images. But she was clever and very instinctive in just trying something new to see how it worked out. But what artist does not do the latter? We all do and we have far more failures than we have successes.

I've been working very hard this year myself, catching up from really two years of muddling my way through Covid anxieties and even 20 weeks last year of Cognitive Behavior Therapy. When one is creating, it's hard to blog and reflect, one is busy doing the work.  Even my journaling is anemic. But I have agreed to do some kind of written reflection on Woodman.

Placebo — Twin Demons (2)

“Twin Demons, the original germination of Twin Demons started in a yoga class, and this yoga teacher said to me, ‘your monkey mind is drunk and bitten by a scorpion and possessed by demons’ and said, it’s an old, old Hindu or Buddhist koan or saying and it just sort of that just landed. It just landed so solidly in my head. And so its lyrics that I had earmarked for a very, very long time and finally, I got the opportunity to use them. My first yoga-inspired song about addiction, naturally, the twin demons of addiction and depression.As we were sort of getting more and more into our vintage synthesizers and kind of, you know, losing ourselves in a kind of psychedelic synth universe, we were way aware that we couldn’t really sort of lose the rock on this album and so we were kind of concerned that there had to be a good balance and Twin Demons, you know, really kind of provides, you know, a very strong rock anchor within this record and sort of enables us to be more experimental and more out there in other places.”

                                       — Brian Molko

The Age of Extremes 1914-1991 by Eric Hobsbawn

 There is much to ponder here. Outside the fact that Hobsbawn doesn't trust unbridled capitalism, he has arguably described the 1970s onward with an observant eye. Others who believe that capitalism has done its best, disagree. I walk a different line. I lived the 1970s onward with a wary eye. This is an extremely detailed book with economics at the heart of it. And I get that. Materialism moves the world. What we see here is how we are always fighting fascism in one form or another. Always. When people are left out of the system, especially those who work and pay taxes, things go a bit haywire. And what does that say about the future when Climate Crisis is going to be pressing down on us all? To shift from fossil fuel to green energy in time to mitigate Climate Crisis, we are going to be less than fair with a lot of people. Some are going to get lost in the shuffle.

I just don't know. I just don't know. 

Birthday Post aka Things I am Grateful to have in my life. (2)

 

Lydia missed my birthday. She's in Italy with her parents. She is an incredible human being. And I love her very much. When I realized that she was going to be swimming in the sea near where Shelley swam in the sea and drown in 1822, I did cry. I am so happy her parents are able to share the world with her, that she will spend many of her years traveling. It's a privilege and an education. Ben and his two girls. Smiling.

Birthday photos 2022

 

As some people know, my love for selfies and narcissism on the Internet are over. My deadline was my birthday and these are my lovely Birthday photos, taken in my garden this morning. I wasn't even going to post any and then I decided to have some fun. I took about two dozen of them, all silly, all messy, and I hit the vivid filter on a few. One can see it here. Otherwise I am very gray. Laughing. I've been aging naturally my entire life. I don't dye my hair. I don't hardly wear any makeup, none here but a little lipstick. I'm a grandmother. I told someone today that I don't think I wanted to grow up and because I was always teaching or around bands, I have retained my silliness and youthful feelings. But I am getting old. Even if genes have been kind to you, one feels aging. Your bones feel it. Your legs at night, after a long day in the garden, hurt. Your hands, especially if you are like me, an artist and writer and gardener, and have used them your entire life, a lot, really ache. I broke some bones in my left hand in high school, my senior year, and I can feel those bones right now. They ache badly at times. My skin is thin, there are wrinkles everywhere. My hair is going to be white soon. I'm fading even though I don't like it. No one gets out of this place alive. This is why I posted the photos, another reminder to my grandchildren that I was here and even once upon a time, a girl of 17 with all these dreams. I still dream. That's my gift. But I have to work hard for those dreams. I have to remind myself that I am lucky I woke up this morning and not to take anything for granted. Nothing last. And I won't last. It's all okay. I've helped bury a lot of people who died younger than me.

Look around you. Everyone you meet on the street. Everyone you know. Everyone you love. Everyone rushing around you in the same city or country is going to die. And I am writing this on my birthday because I am lucky to have a birthday, to be aging and still feel love, hope, and a kind of innocence I felt as that wild child of 17 years of age.

That's my birthday gift. That I can find joy and wonder at my age, with all I have experienced, with all I know to be true.

I hope if you are reading this, anyone, that you can find joy, too.

June 2022 is here.

"And then one fairy night, May became June." — F. Scott Fitzgerald