If one has read this blog, there are other posts on Marc Chagall. He's a favorite of mine, what I call a true Romantic in the literary tradition. He so believed in love. I look at this and I see two people, flying over a world that is full of the usual conflicts and troubles, etc. But they have embraced each other in complete trust. Not in complete perfection, because there is no such thing, but in an agreement to trust and be themselves, to be honest, to support one another. This has to be the finest kind of love. There is no doubt that Chagall and his wife had such a relationship, that he loved her very much, and she loved him. Bella Rosenfeld Chagall died tragically and unexpectedly from a bacteria infection a few years after Chagall and her fled occupied France in 1941. For many months, Chagall could not paint at all, and what stirred him to return to work was Bella's memory as she became symbiotic with all the Jews dead in that terrible, dark war. His second marriage was much more an agreement for companionship that had more to do with his being an older man living alone, etc. I'll write more on this later. This statement is not meant to diminish the importance of Vava Brodsky in Chagall's life. It was just a very different kind of relationship.
Chagall incorporated elements of fantasy into his art by the way he showed his memories. He loved the circus. He loved clowns. He loved lovers and kisses. This is all very important to my own work, to my own heart's desires. There is always an element of fantasy when it comes to love, the way we dream it, think about it, act it out, couple with each other, in moments of shared intimacy, whatever that intimacy may be. I like to think that Chagall and Bella were happy lovers and friends and told each other stories and even fought with each other with the same passion that they loved one another. No one paints like Chagall. There is really no one to compare him to, unless one thinks of color and then Matisse. Chagall's focus was narrow. But there was only one of his kind. Those are the magical people to me. The ones who really are alone in the world except maybe they have a trusted lover. These creatives live in their own heads, they create their own imaginative universes.
Happy Birthday, Chagall. I am posting one day early because I might not be able to do Internet tomorrow. I've art to make.
"The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and to hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again." — William Cuthbert Faulkner
“We want the creative faculty to imagine that which we know; we want the generous impulse to act that which we imagine; we want the poetry of life; our calculations have outrun conception; we have eaten more than we can digest.”
— Percy Shelley
It's July and I have a particular mission. It's how to balance the amount of information I crave with the need to let my imagination thrive. That's pretty simple in a sentence. In our post 1980 lives, this is a very difficult thing to accomplish, though as one can read in the above quote, Percy Shelley was thinking about it in the 19th century. For creatives, it's extremely difficult at any time in history. We are running on curiosity and ideas. Soaking up information of any kind is just natural. All the new and colorful tools, all the processes shared by other creatives, these things are temptations. But at some point last year, during my CBT therapy, I came to realize that all this information was really entrenching on my personal dreams. I did some of my best raw work during the early 1990s, before I had the Internet, Amazon Prime, and a phone. And I am willing to admit that this changed not only my process but my imaginative space. It is true, I am a better painter and writer right now due to the fact that I have studied more, practiced more, had good information and so forth, but as Shelley wrote, I have eaten more than I can digest, I have miscalculated. My imagination is suffering, my dreams are suffering. I can see this happening not only to myself but to others. For example, I've been studying ADHD and how it works on the brain and in particular, how that might affect creativity. Psychologists are now doing studies on the connection between social media and ADHD and how social media may do more harm than good with ADHD patients. Information overload does affect how creatives think so why would it not seriously affect those with altered executive skills due to ADHD? My mission is to regain some of that 1980s and early 1990s imaginative spirit. This means less social media. Less reading. Less conversation. I want to nurture my own creative space and give my imagination a place to grow.
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.
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.
"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
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.
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.
“What hurts so bad about youth isn't the actual butt whippings the world delivers. It's the stupid hopes playacting like certainties.”
―
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.
I just don't know. I just don't know.
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.
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.
Haylee came into my life in 2007. I still remember the first time I saw her. I didn't know at the time, she was only 17 years old, though she would be 18 in October. I also didn't know she was pregnant with my first grandchild. We had a mixed beginning but during that time, I learned a lot about myself, her, girls, what I thought was life and what was really life. It made me a better person and I will always look back on that time as a period of great growth and understanding of the world. Haylee came into my life when my parents were also leaving this world. I saw old things falling away, things I held dear, I felt great loss and chaos. It was chaos for Haylee too. At 18 she would have her first baby and be living in a very troubling situation. That's just too young but so many girls experience this. And I felt it. I understood it. It humbled me. It reminded me of my youth. It reminded me of how we change in life but how we are always part of our past selves.
Haylee is beautiful, not only on the outside but the inside. She loves with her whole heart. She's been my best friend for so long now. And I see myself in her, and I also see myself through the lens of her own view.
On my birthday, I promised myself to be thankful for people this year, to be happy that I was having another birthday and was healthy enough to enjoy it both physically and mentally, because that hasn't always been the case in the last six years. Haylee's presence in my life is the gift. That I know her and she loves me.
So I have been writing a lot while it rains, taken advantage of the fact that I cannot walk or plant in the garden. I can't even paint the deck.
Overall, I am pleased with both the writing and the garden. I've worked hard. I've been listening to Placebo and even have been making notes for the essays. The only time I took a break the last two weeks was to post some Placebo songs on the blog and to watch Stranger Things, Season 3 because Season 4 dropped today on Netflix. I like Stranger Things. It's so 80s and I love 80s anything. I have been active on Twitter, too. Facebook not so much. Mostly looking at what other people post. Watched a lot of films people recommended. Finished a big history book on the 20th century, more on the book later. I loved it. But it was depressing. lol
But May has been about writing and gardening. It's one of the most productive months I have had this year. And I've been really in the flow and able to do all the things I wanted, even here on the blog.
Other notes. Ben, Chelsea and Lydia are in the UK today. They will spend a week in England. Then move on to Italy for the rest of their vacation, ending in Pompeii. Jack had to run all kinds of errands today so I didn't get to see him but he called and we talked two hours. It was cold when I went to Home Depot this morning. Warming up soon. Haylee and I need to plot a trip to the zoo in Memphis. Joey told me he would come Sunday and spend the day and night with me and leave Monday afternoon. I imagine we will go see a movie and cook on the grill. It's a birthday thing for me.
My birthday is June 1st. I will take another birthday photo. Smiling. None from last year, since I was really ill and Laverne was here and we were all so depressed over Lana's death, May 24. Not even cake.
This year I am having cake.
Placebo songs off the new album, Never Let Me Go, I have made notes on:
Happy Birthday in the Sky.
This Is What You Wanted.
Forever Chemicals.
Perfectly dystopian album full of despair and anger. But mostly just sad. Very sad. For all sorts of reasons. I hope it was cathartic for Molko. Damn.
— Edna St. Vincent Millay
Things I have accomplished. With Patsy's help, I pressure washed the deck, getting it ready for painting. Patsy pressure washed chairs and the concrete patio. Wow. Looks so good. She and I both cut and removed dead or faltering roses, plants, tree limbs, crepe myrtle messes from the front lawn. It's amazing how much we got done. Just amazing.
— Langston Hughes
P.S. My mother did belong to the greatest generation of the 20th century. When I reflect on her life objectively, I don't know how she stayed sane. She was flawed but incredible. As we often say in our family, Mother was a force of Nature.
“Do stuff. be clenched, curious. Not waiting for inspiration's shove or society's kiss on your forehead. Pay attention. It's all about paying attention. attention is vitality. It connects you with others. It makes you eager. stay eager.”
―
“Even if it meant that she had failed, she was glad. And if what she'd wanted had been impossible from the start, still there was a certain lonely comfort in the fact that she'd known it was impossible and had gone ahead and done it anyway.”
"The twentieth century proves that the victory of the ideals of justice and equality is always ephemeral, but, if you manage to safeguard the freedom, you can, however, start over ... do not despair, even in the most desperate situations. "
— Leo Valiani
Erring on the side of Hope
Shelley's House. From a drawing. Lerici, Gulf of Spezia, Italy
April 30, 1822, Percy Shelley and family and friends took possession of house.
Gardening is my escape. I disappear in work and simple pleasures. I don't think about anything. It's the only time that my mind is truly at rest. And I do feel happy there, weeding, planting flowers, getting dirty. Right now, at this moment, I have this mental image in my head, of a younger me, kneeling over a new flowerbed in a house I once lived in and I can almost recreate the feeling of it. I can see it. There are so many moments like that and they are always in gardens with me working. By myself. Most people don't take as much pleasure in weeding as I do. Weeding...
My "happy place" has always been in the garden.
And I know it's my escape.
By chance and one might say, luck, I read Emma by Jane Austen this last week. It was the one novel by Austen that I had not (really) read. I suppose I flipped through its pages several times and read passages, but not a deep read. Perhaps I thought it a straight comedy and was never in the mood for that. I hardly know or remember. Emma has left a deep impression on me, which may or may not have something to do with the Romantic Period or Percy Shelley or English gardens, I don’t know or care, but I have decided to put aside my previous reading plans and reread all of Jane Austen along with some biographies, letters, and other non-fiction materials. I am going to reread Richard Holmes’ biography of Shelley, too. And it’s spring and summer and I am thinking of gardens and flowers and paintings and the beauty of nature. If I had lived in England, I would have loved a cottage and a garden and country life. I have lived a country life. Emma is a very mature work by Austen, a novel with themes that explore self-reflection, self-awareness, and the how people can move from self-delusion to reality. It should be taught in senior year of high school where young women can discuss these themes and ask themselves questions. I’d love to teach it. There is a harshness to Austen that many overlook. She might have even been more radical than we normally think. No, she didn’t run off with a married poet like Mary Godwin but just maybe Austen had more psychological insights than the former authoress, perhaps because Mary Godwin Shelley was plagued by depression and abandonment issues. There is such clarity to Austen’s work. That was her gift. One just has to read closely.
Speaking of cold, after the last two winters, I will never wish to live anywhere north of where I live in the entire world. If anything I wish to live south of where I live, closer to New Orleans. I need the sun. I need warmth. Winters ruin me.
I spent a lot of time outside today.
The sun was shining.
Small things. Beautiful things. It's been such a harsh winter.
Lanier, as we all know, is a genius and a very decent human being. He cares about creative people. This book was written over a decade ago and he saw the film industry as it is now, gone the way of the music industry. It all reminded me of the news on Twitter this week over the new four payout system in publishing. I remember when they began basketing royalties, and the three payout system was harsh. I think, in hindsight, I was lucky to have chosen the path I did. Lots of experience, timely checks, and less stress.
But now I want to write a novel.
Oh, well....
I remember you closing the shutters
And laying down by my side
And the light that was still slipping through
It was painting your body in stripes
I remember the trees summoned down
Like an archangel choir
And the ocean was all we could see
And I knew that I wanted you
Silent lights, iris and mimosas, 1913, Henri Matisse
“The world is a hellish place and bad writing is destroying the quality of our suffering.”
— Tom Waits
“But you cant be alive forever, and you always wear out life long before you have exhausted the possibilities of living. And all that must be somewhere; all that could not have been invented and created just to be thrown away. And the earth is shallow; there is not a great deal of it before you come to the rock. And the earth dont want to just keep things, hoard them; it wants to use them again.”
"Always there have been penalties
for Luddites, and I am one
familiar with the penalties,
though so far I have not been hanged.
Luddites are guilty of disrespect
to any silliness that is popular,
to any meanness that is profitable."
— Wendell Berry
I was a girl who embraced her contradictions because I believed certainty was the cold lie, and so my life has been an odd mix of conflicting perspectives. Sometimes I trembled, while dancing at the cruel edges of paradox and its relentless ambivalence. Sometimes I thought I might go mad with it all, but instead I have learned how to love and dance and sing and wonder. Failure became my best teacher, and the trivial of my life and experiences was remarkable, including myself. Living was enough.
It is all enough.
It's a New Year/blog/experience and so forth....
Moving on. Welcome 2022.
