WORD PAINTINGS #88 - SPRING CLEANING

20 May 2020 - Llano Quemado, New Mexico - Turned off the heat, opened the windows, changed the bed - did the laundry.  Washed my summer painting clothes - linen pants, blue jeans.  Doing simple tasks for the past two weeks, trying to gain some equilibrium in what is being called our "new normal". Adjustments - adapting...patience.  Quietly listening, observing. 

Finished my Book of Last Wishes - a seven year coming to Jesus admission that I will not live forever.  A big relief - feeling lighter - it is done.  Now I can move onto this next phase of my life without leaving a mess behind when I go to that Big Easel in the Sky.  At peace.

The news is still dark and disturbing.  Much parsing of our Very Stable Genius' every word.  I sometimes stare in awe at the twisting and turning of the hosts of news programs and pundits trying so hard to make sense of insanity. Wonder how many people believe this craziness is normal.  Remembering an old Alan Bates movie The King of Hearts - at the end he knocked on the door of the insane asylum and begged to be taken in -obviously the people in that building were saner than the world he was leaving behind!  I got that feeling when I watched the gun-toting yahoos in the Michigan State House.  Could all this chaos and anger over a pandemic eventually morph into a civil war?  Sadly this time is rich in opportunity for those who want their own version of America the Beautiful!

Still clearing up little piles of Life around the house - odds and ends left over from the move last year.  So strange to be doing this alone.  Have had helpers for over five years ever since John died.  Long time friends and special people are Doug and Hope; it is unusual now to just meet them at the door avoiding our easy routine of chores and sharing lunches and good conversation.  Told them we will go back to our old routine the middle of June - wearing masks and keeping our physical distance.  In the meantime it has been very good for me to mop floors and do laundry - put my house in order.  I am so much stronger - my learned helplessness has been replaced by a new and healthy sense of independence - I love it!

What I know for sure is that life will never go back to "normal" after this.  Feeling that every person, every family will need to find their own path through this unfamiliar forest - no trail of breadcrumbs! Our old ways have come to an end.  Strangely this is a very hopeful time....this New Beginning hasn't taken shape.  Everything is happening so fast that we are still in a state of shock.  Mandatory hibernation gives us all the opportunity to assess our values - a time for physical and moral housecleaning.  What to keep - what to leave behind....

Personally I plan to leave behind the image of myself at the age of 40.  My mind still makes plans every morning for that younger version of myself.  Wishful thinking.  Those days of being Superwoman - I could go to the grocery store in the morning, clean the whole house, bake four loaves of bread before the children came home from school.  I worked at the law office and painted at night after the kids were in bed.  Art shows, galleries - How the hell did I do it?  I was a Human Doing!

Don't laugh - when all this started, panic took over.  All the talk of food shortages, scarcity.  I decided to make a victory garden.  Bought many envelopes and bags of seeds - grow bags.  Just as I was on the verge of making an order for soil and compost at Ace Hardware, I watched a video made by a local man who has a one acre "farm" which took him seven years to build!  Faced with the choice of filling up the blank canvases stacked up all over my studio space, or becoming Mrs. Greenjeans, I gave the grow bags and seed potatoes to my friend Hope and sent the seeds to my friends in Albuquerque.  They are thrilled and I am free to mix up some new painting medium today and get on with my real work, the paintings.  "FOCUS" is my word of the day. It is entirely possible that I still have some surprises to offer!

Stay healthy, my friends - imagine this Brave New World....oh, the Wonder of it All!!!!
 

WORD PAINTINGS #87 - INTO THE LIGHT

LLano Quemado, New Mexico - 25 April 2020 -  The coyote family down by the river sang me to sleep last night!   Smiled on my way to Dreamland. Unable to write for a while - have truly been "out of words".

Began my quarantine March 1st, so today I've had time to think about all the adjustments required to "social distance".  It has been exactly one year since my midnight emergency plane ride for surgery in Colorado Springs.  So much happened after that surprise that I really didn't have time or the energy to process all the changes  - and now a pandemic!  "What are the lessons I need to learn?  

The tragedy in all of this is watching our government scramble, totally unprepared.  Wind-whipped by the speed of all the death and destruction, it is obvious they have a long way to arrive at serious solutions.  Yesterday's suggestion to use Clorox to combat the ravages of this virus has everyone questioning these rambling press conferences/political rallies.  Even the voices of sanity like Dr. Fauci have to watch their words in order to stroke the ego of the Very Stable Genius.  As a result there is no PLAN in place - and the states are left on their own to cobble together their supplies for testing - hoping their shipments are not stolen out from under them by FEMA!!!  We are at the mercy of a bunch of grifters looking to make a profit from these dark days.  

Watching the nurses and doctors struggle to treat the sick and dying without ventilators, protective gear - the massive scale of patients needing care - and the danger to their own health and safety is incomprehensible!!!    Early on governors of many states recognized the scale of ineptitude from the White House and sadly realized they needed to put their own plans in place in order to protect their citizens. 

Our own Governor Michelle Lujan Grisham called for early quarantine and closure of non-essential businesses.  In Taos the Ski Valley closed early, galleries closed and eventually hotels and motels shut down. State Troopers were also monitoring traffic into Taos.  As a result of quick action on the part of our government officials and citizens' compliance with the stay at home orders we have so far not been hit with the same level of devastation as some other states. 
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15 May 2020 - Llano Quemado, New Mexico....Gov. Cuomo said it best yesterday "The only one who can keep you safe is YOU!"   

Sitting on my little red sofa watching big, blowy clouds form this afternoon.  Biggest excitement this week - a huge rabbit ran across my neighbor's yard yesterday morning - I've named him Thumper!  Today is the first day that some businesses in Taos will begin to open.  Have decided to continue my social distancing at least until the middle of June - and only then will I partner with my photographer friend for one or two day trips for source material. No stores, no shopping - will order art supplies online.

Am amazed that many people think that life will get back to normal - my guess is that we will all have to wait forever.  First of all there wasn't much "normal" about my old life!  Social isolation is my oldest friend - my happy place.  Give me a palette full of oil paint, a new canvas and a bunch of brushes...Nirvana!  

Sense this virus will be with us in many forms for many years.  Nobel prize winner Peter Doherty predicts that there will be a vaccine by this September; being developed now in Australia.  Millions of doses are already being produced in anticipation of its efficacy.  However none will be available to anyone over 60!  Leaves me out!  The only one who can keep me safe is ME!

Have been stunned into silence these past eight weeks.  Realize that I need to gladly give up the old way of doing things.  A cleansing - heart, mind and spirit - and all the messy closets and drawers!  Time to finish my Book of Last Wishes - a compilation of information....bank records, passwords, names and numbers of anyone who helps to keep me running.  Links to my website and eBay store.  Especially my "Right to Die" instructions.  There is nothing depressing about doing this - it is an act of love for my daughters, Mary and Sarah, who will be left with sorting out all the essentials of my long and exciting life!  A big sigh of relief to finish up this weekend. 

As long as there is breath in my body, I will keep moving..albeit much more slowly than in days of yore!  Two weeks of cleaning and sorting - no painting.  Today mixing up a new batch of my painting medium - a 400 year old recipe given to me by California painter Robert Clark.  Clear off my worktable.  Fifteen blank canvases staring at me hungry for some paint - color, color and more color!

Am affected deeply by this time alone.  Miss my happy helpers Hope and Doug.  They come only as far as the door now - no hugs!  I miss my HUGS!  

Sending out some big virtual hugs to you this afternoon.....more to come.  Believe there are some lovely surprises hidden behind all these dark clouds - keep the FAITH!!!

 

WORD PAINTINGS #86 - RADICAL FAITH

Llano Quemado, New Mexico - 2 April 2020 

Sometimes a ray of hope is a simple shadow made by a ventilation pipe and a canale on a certain day every year - and that is the day you just happen to plan a field trip shortly after the loss of a child. And there it is - an omen, a sign on the ancient adobe wall of a mission church.  Childhood faith kicks in while staring at the shadow....a small spark of life returns.  Yes, I have absolute faith that if the sun shines on that old adobe wall each year around the 26th of October, that cross will be there for all to see.  How simple is that?

Radical faith is far more complicated - impossible to grasp - small quick-silver glimpses of what we once knew as "normal".  Nothing we can hold in our minds for long in these unsettling days and months to come.  No picture of what the future will hold - everyday life as we knew it is forever changed.  How is it possible to comprehend such uncertainty?   Is it possible to navigate the vast Unknown - this new Game of Life without the instructions?

"We may be living through times of unprecedented change, but in uncertainty lies the power to influence the future. Now is not the time to despair, but to act.

It is important to say what hope is not: it is not the belief that everything was, is or will be fine. The evidence is all around us of tremendous suffering and destruction. The hope I am interested in is about broad perspectives with specific possibilities, ones that invite or demand that we act. It is also not a sunny everything-is-getting-better narrative, though it may be a counter to the everything-is-getting-worse one. You could call it an account of complexities and uncertainties, with openings. “Critical thinking without hope is cynicism, but hope without critical thinking is naivety,” the Bulgarian writer Maria Popova recently remarked.

Hope locates itself in the premises that we don’t know what will happen and that in the spaciousness of uncertainty is room to act. When you recognise uncertainty, you recognise that you may be able to influence the outcomes – you alone or you in concert with a few dozen or several million others. Hope is an embrace of the unknown and the unknowable, an alternative to the certainty of both optimists and pessimists. Optimists think it will all be fine without our involvement; pessimists adopt the opposite position; both excuse themselves from acting. It is the belief that what we do matters even though how and when it may matter, who and what it may impact, are not things we can know beforehand. We may not, in fact, know them afterwards either, but they matter all the same, and history is full of people whose influence was most powerful after they were gone.

Together we are very powerful, and we have a seldom-told, seldom-remembered history of victories and transformations that can give us confidence that, yes, we can change the world because we have many times before. You row forward looking back, and telling this history is part of helping people navigate toward the future. We need a litany, a rosary, a sutra, a mantra, a war chant of our victories. The past is set in daylight, and it can become a torch we can carry into the night that is the future."  Rebecca Solnit - The Guardian

WORD PAINTINGS #85 - RESPITE

Llano Quemado, New Mexico - 3/17/20  - Taking the day off today.  All hell broke loose last Friday when the shelves at Smith's Grocery in town were bare to the bone!  Thought I was calm as a cucumber until today when I STOPPED!  I bought into the panic buying with a large pantry order on Amazon and another order of frozen food from Schwann's home delivery service.  Night before last I bought a small upright freezer from Sears! GUILTY!  Hoping today will mark the beginning of my return to sanity!

Scary flashbacks to all panics similar to this time....Pearl Harbor (I was a small child, but WWII affected every day of the first six years of my little life), hiding under our desks waiting for atomic bomb attacks which never happened, but scarred our fragile child minds forever.  Oh, and the summer- long polio quarantine when my brother and I couldn't leave the front porch - children were sick and dying all around us until Dr. Salk discovered his miracle vaccine.  My brother had fever and symptoms and my mother believed he had a "mild case" of polio.  The Chicago blizzard of 1967 - grocery stores emptied out overnight and staples were selling at black market prices.  The big 2010 gas outage with no heat in the house for ten days with temps ten and even twenty below zero- a little electric heater in the bedroom for me and my animal pals, Virginia Woolf and Rosie.  Times of uncertainty - fear and panic. Each time the beginning of a "new normal".

Somehow this time feels oddly unlike all the others.  This virus is occurring world-wide -pages and pages of obituaries in the Italian newspapers....a decision not to save anyone 80 or older (gave me chills).  Save Your Life warnings - forced social isolation. San Francisco is shut down completely and Gov. Cuomo is ready to do the same in New York.

My family is "out there" in all of this.  One of my girls trying to get her belongings from New York to her new home in Santa Fe - hoping the movers arrive today and she can get a plane ticket to leave the big city tomorrow.  Her sister caring for her husband who had surgery yesterday.  My brother and his family at M.D.Anderson in Houston caring for one of his daughters who is very ill.  What me worry?  Messaged my brother today - "If thoughts are prayers I am praying for you all day long".  Same for my twin girls and their significant others, my granddaughter - my friends and helpers Doug, Hope and Dan!   Feeling helpless and a little scared.

For me, social isolation is not only a necessity, but a dear old friend! Still in my pajamas at one in the afternoon.  Making myself useful in small ways - still trying to catch up from last year's dramas.  Worked with Dan the Man, my computer whiz to update my website this morning.  Taxes almost finished on the dining room table.  Gave up watching the news yesterday.  Watched the CYA press conference with the president and his sidekick and wondered how we ever got to be governed by this motley crew of grifters?  Are we without hope, doomed forever? Actually I have had the growing feeling that all these Orwellian characters needed to be exposed.  All their conspiracies exposed - all the rocks turned over because none of this corruption is new - years and years of rot!

This horrific time might just be the waking up of the world to a new value system - I think the tanking stock market is a good indication of great change.  What will happen when families are forced to be together - to get acquainted, talk and listen to each other?  What will happen to the planet when factories are not burping toxic gases into the air and automobiles aren't spewing gunk from their exhaust pipes? What if our food insecurities cause us to grow little victory gardens to feed healthier food to our children?  What if we stop shopping for things we really don't need?  What if we learn to listen deeply to one another without taking sides?  What if we learn to live another way with less chaos and panic? What if this is our time to separate from our old habits and values and the beginning of great social change?

In the meantime, there was this little bird on my back portal singing the sweetest song this morning - busy building her nest.  I can see the ground turning green with little seedlings - the Crazy Cosmos seeds I planted next to the well last fall - the start of my "meadow in the front of my house.  One geranium plant in my office has ten fist-sized pink blooms and her potted friends try their best to keep up - makes me smile every time I look at them.   Work on my new 40"x40" painting "First Snow" progresses and I am excited to start all over again tomorrow morning - hoping to complete it by the end of next week.  Somehow I know all the trauma in life before has prepared us for this time; it is entirely possible that we will not only survive but create a more tolerant and compassionate society  - one small planet, one people, please....

Only one question...why hoard tons of toilet paper?    

WORD PAINTINGS #84 - SOCIAL DISTANCING

Llano Quemado, N.M. - 13 March 2020.....Taking stock today - going to give in and self-quarantine for two months.  A lot of work to do - many changes.  Above image is my new 40"x40" painting of Truchas - "First Snow".  The frame has been delivered just waiting for me to complete this canvas.  Another instance of "just holding the brush" - the piece seems to have a mind of its own and truly is painting itself.  Love it when this happens!

World news is scary - sense we are beyond "freefall" as a country and now on the edge of total collapse.  The Senate has recessed for the weekend - criminal lack of response to the pandemic.  Reading Li Edelkoort's posts - she believes this global crisis will cause us to reassess our value systems - create simple but more meaningful lives. Amazing twist on what most believe is total disaster.  Panic reigns.  Grocery store shelves are empty - people are hoarding toilet paper and fighting in the aisles over canned goods!!

Am reminded of another time when this happened - that huge Chicago snowstorm of 1967 - the world seemed to stop for about ten days until all the streets were plowed and the grocery stores stocked their shelves.  That weekend milk and bread sold from the back of semis stranded on the highways for $10 each!  My twins were three weeks old, their brother 18 months....no formula, no food in the house. Their father was stranded at work.  An angel next door took a sled and bought formula for the babies. We survived then - we will again!

Started to buy into the panic.  My daughter was headed for Germany yesterday - her baggage checked in - she cancelled her trip just before she was to board the plane.  Had spent two tense days trying to talk her out of the trip - what do mothers know???  Go ahead, ignore me.  Big sighs of relief when she called that she stayed in New York.  

Thinking of the devastation this crisis will cause in so many lives.  It isn't just the virus, many will never recover from the cancellations and closures.  Not only illness to consider, but financial collapse for many.  A global recession is predicted. Futile to blame our fearless leader - we have been on this slide for more than thirty years...greed is not good and now we are paying the price!  Middle income and poor families will suffer the most. Imagining bread lines and soup kitchens popping up all over in an attempt to feed hungry people who no longer have jobs.

Have been an introvert for most of my life.  Telling an artist to keep a "social distance" is a no-brainer and an unexpected gift from the Art Gods.  However, there are millions of moms who have no idea how they will feed a hungry family, or how they will keep their jobs if they have to stay home with their children while schools are closed.  Caregivers, restaurant workers, nurses, doctors - all at great risk.  Politics and elections fade in importance - we are at the mercy of three very old men who promise to change America for the better. Honestly, I don't believe them.  What I do believe is that our country will never be the same as it was.  The result of  total CHAOS is CHANGE!!!!  Perhaps we can start with greater kindness, compassion and understanding toward our fellow travelers -- one small planet, one people, please!  We can do better, be better.....

WORD PAINTINGS #83 - O WHERE O WHERE IS CHICHICASTENANGO?

21 February 2020 -Llano Quemado, New Mexico -  Last night Josh Gates, Archaeologist and Explorer (Expedition Unknown) began a trek to the Pre-Classic Mayan site of El Mirador in Guatemala (dates back to 2000 BC!).  Was so excited to see them fly into Guatemala City, stock up supplies, load their gear onto helicopters and fly to the island of Flores in the Department of Peten.  I saw familiar places... memories of my empty-handed leap into The Great Unknown!

1956 - First semester of my Junior year at Pulaski High School, Milwaukee, Wisconsin - Miss Schaefer's Beginning Spanish Class.  Each year Miss Schaefer and Miss Flynn, the other Spanish language instructor, would spend their Easter vacations exploring countries in Latin America.  On their return that year they co-lectured our class on their visit to Guatemala and all the colorful Easter ceremonies and processions. Miss Flynn described in detail their experiences on Easter Sunday in a city with the exotic name of Chichicastenango!  My sixteen-year old brain couldn't comprehend the courage it would take to make such a journey!  Their joy in the telling of their experiences made me wonder if one day I could find myself in the middle of that ancient marketplace in Chichicastenango.  I didn't know when or how....if ever.

Not long after that time my father was transferred back to Chicago.  We packed up the car and on a rainy November day - I waved goodbye to my boyfriend, Bob, and cried big ugly tears to leave my "Happy Days" life behind (Yes, they could have filmed that wonderful program at my high school - with a whole bunch of Fonzie look alikes!).  Life got very serious after our move to the suburbs of the big city. I didn't want to grow up! - Graduation, secretarial jobs in the Loop, marriage and three children - and in l967 our move to the alien planet of the high desert Southwest. 

1970 - Santa Fe, New Mexico -A few lifetimes  later my art life cried out for change/inspiration and two places were on my wish list.  The first was a train ride from El Paso through Copper Canyon in Mexico all the way to the Pacific Ocean at Topolobampo, Mexico.  Inspired by George Carlson's pastel paintings of the Tarahumara, I thought "why not"? And the other place which had lived in my dreams for almost 25 years was,  you guessed it, Chchicastenango, Guatemala!!!   

WORD PAINTINGS #82 - DOING DISHES

Llano Quemado, N.M. - 20 February 2020 -A light snow this morning - whole bunch of jobs lined up, a resistance to all of them at first - too easy to stay in bed!  One foot in front of another; one day at a time!  Still playing catch up after last year's dramas.  Yes, a pile of dishes are in the kitchen sink.

Sunday drive to the Mesa - late afternoon.  Finally ended up at a place called Carson just as the sun was setting.  An old abandoned schoolhouse silhouetted against the last rays of light.  Deeply rutted road - lonesome fence posts, patches of snow - muted colors dark ochres and umbers - pure Heaven!  This morning (before doing the dishes) I began to edit the sixty or seventy new photos.  Pulled out seven or eight to study the possibilities for new paintings.  If I choose to go ahead, these new pieces will be starkly different from my other work.  Open spaces - a peaceful loneliness - solitude.

Packaged up three prints to be delivered.  Ordered some double wall cardboard to ship prints.  Put a pot roast in the slow cooker.  Had a quick lunch.  Thinking about all the possibilities for the new work - painting in my head....seeing changes in the photos for more solid compositions.  Did the paperwork for two little auction pieces that sold this afternoon.  No time for politics today.  Low wi-fi.  A lot of annoying buffering since the flood.  Sometimes no news is good news...a mental cleanse!

Put on some CDs of my favorite Mexican singers - Jose Jose and Luis Miguel.  Sat down at the easel and began to paint a 6"x8" of the small church of San Ysidro - this week's new auction painting.  Tomorrow I will gesso some 30"x40" canvases for the new work.  Each day is a moving meditation - quietly going from one "job" to another trying to do each task for its own sake.  There is definitely a craft to painting and preparation is everything - my version of "doing dishes".

Oh, yes I finally did the dishes in the kitchen sink!  This was a very good day...glad I didn't stay in bed, I would have missed it!