I woke later than usual. No alarm. Sunday. I woke feeling genuinely better for the first time in many days. I got up, dressed, and slipped out of the house quietly.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
It’s been awhile since my Traveling Partner had a chance to sleep and wake without my (sometimes uncomfortable) presence first thing. I also prefer to wake alone and get myself together before I have to deal with people. Yes, even my beloved. I hope he sleeps in, and enjoys waking slowly.
I’m probably not yet up to a long walk, so I make a shopping list and head up the highway to a favored grocer to pick up a few things. I grab coffee on the way. I take my time with things. This is that delicate time between being ill and being entirely well where a morning of exertion could easily result in a relapse and days more being sick. I am taking my time. There’s no reason to rush.
Autumn is all around. I enjoy seeing the fall colors everywhere. I’m eager to take my recollections into the studio with me and paint thoughts of autumn, seasons, and change. A steady rain has been falling. My arthritis pain is well-managed and not vexing me. Good day to paint.
I breathe, exhale, and relax. I finish my coffee and check my shopping list. It’s already time to begin again.
Being ill during the work week is bad enough. Thinking I might be over it, and discovering just as the weekend begins that no, no I’m definitely not over it, sucks so much more. I slept most of yesterday away, after I got home from work. I slept quite late into the morning (for me), waking to find my Traveling Partner already up, already drinking coffee.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
I got up. Stretched. Took symptom relieving medication (I woke “during the night” around the time for my usual meds, and took those then and went back to bed). Washed my face and enjoyed the feeling of cold water on hot skin. I readied myself for the day, such as it is. I expect to spend it mostly just taking care of myself here at home. I went into the kitchen to make coffee, greeting my beloved on my way past him.
…He grumbles about my presence; I’m sick and unpleasant to be around. I take my coffee into my studio…
I ache all over this morning. Maybe from the sickness itself, maybe from being in bed so much over the past… week. Fuck. It’s been a week. No wonder my Traveling Partner was so firm about wanting me to stay home and just take care of myself. This shit has lingered. I take a couple Tylenol and wash them down with my coffee, hoping it helps. Seems a healthier choice that reaching immediately for the big gun Rx pain relief. I remind myself to drink plenty of water.
I’m only half finished with this cup of coffee (which is excellent), and I’m already thinking about going back to bed. I sigh to myself. Definitely still sick. I am glad I ran errands Tuesday, although I was already ill then, and deluding myself that I was “mostly over it”. The errands got done, and I could not have done them on any day since. I breathe, inhaling deeply, filling my lungs. I exhale slowly. I pay attention to my spine, my shoulders, my jaw, observing each notable point of pain (places I know I “carry my stress”), and coax them to relax, each in turn. Another breath. Another exhalation. Another moment to relax. I may go back to bed soon, but I’m in the studio now. That puts a smile on my face that feels like it lights me up from within. I’m not up to much, but painting is not especially physically taxing, these days; I’m set up for the painter that I am now, not that much younger, more limber, painter I was in my 20s or 30s. (I recall with some amusement, painting a rather large piece in acrylic, and just not being able to find quite the right perspective from which to work, until I stood up, looming over it from above. I painted it standing over it, leaning down, legs wide for stability, blood rushing to my head, and managing both balance and control of my brush. I could not do that now.)
I look around the studio. There’s some tidying and set up to do before I can paint, because I took my paints to the coast last weekend. It seems so long ago now. I barely unpacked. S’ok. It’s something to do on a sick day at home that will keep me pleasantly occupied and feel just a bit like I’m doing something, instead of “wasting” the weekend taking care of myself. I sit with that for a few minutes. Why does self-care feel like “wasted” time, this morning? Why did it ever? Why does it now? Do I always experience self-care as a “waste of time”? I don’t think I do. Why now? Is it down to feeling resentful that I’m sick? These fragile mortal vessels are endlessly breaking down over some virus or microbe or injury – but the care needed to restore them to good working order isn’t wasted. It’s utterly necessary. There’s always so much to do in one mortal life. Being ill is what feels most like “wasted” time. I’m annoyed that I’m ill. I have other shit to do.
…And room for more…
I move around a bit. Set up the easel. Unpack the newly arrived Pastelbord. Put the brushes in their holder (which my Traveling Partner made for me). Unfurl the cotton dishtowels I use to protect surfaces (and other art) from pastel dust. Open the paintbox that holds my precious pastels – so many colors! I sigh contentedly, and for a moment being sick is irrelevant and I’m filled with joy. Odd that a box of colors can create such a feeling of wonder and joy. I savor the feeling while it lasts. (Feelings, like moments, are fleeting, impermanent.) I chuckle at the disarray. I foolishly left my paintbox open as it appears in the picture, and one day it got knocked to the floor by mistake. Pastels went everywhere, breaking as they fell against edges. I didn’t really sort them by color when I picked them up and put them back into their neat slots. I didn’t have it in me at the time.
…I don’t know which is more visually pleasing and artistically inspiring, the mad chaos of colors, or the carefully sorted arrangement by hue. My brain enjoys them differently, I suppose. As it turned out, becoming more used to painting it pastels, it became progressively more clear that sorting pastels into neat categories, rows, trays, color gradations, are all just ways to fiddle with the colors when no painting is going on. It’s not particularly necessary, nor useful (this is an opinion, your results may vary).
I finish my coffee. I finish my writing. It’s clear I’m still unwell. I contemplate going back to bed. I think about painting. The medications have all done their thing…good for what it is, but it leaves me feeling sort of dumb and slowed down, too. I think I’ll give in to that, go back to bed, and begin again later.
Interesting day. Art that I’m happy with and some good photos.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
I spent most of the day quietly contemplating some things my beloved has said recently, and some useful perspective offered by my therapist – and my own past writing. Sometimes having memory issues is almost comical, it’s often seriously frustrating, but in this instance it’s actually sort of useful. I can go back and look at my own experience of life, and take my own advice. 😆 I chuckle to myself, although I’m quite serious.
Good day of painting. Strange day of random human stuff. A drunken man raising hell by a nearby restaurant. He punched a woman in the face just a few steps from the hotel. The police were called. Nothing much came of it and the man along with the woman he’d struck retreated to their hotel room. There’s a strange woman on the second floor with a small pack of agitated tiny dogs on perpetually tangled leashes. They yap a lot. In the early morning, when I stepped out for a good quality coffee, the elevator was filled with fishermen and a very strange uncomfortable vibe. I ignored all of it, and kept to myself. I painted, and when I wasn’t painting, I was thinking about painting, and moving colors around in my paint boxes thoughtfully.
Later a bite to eat. Cold fried chicken. It was fine. I crashed pretty early, napped, and woke in time to watch the moon set. Nice interlude.
I catch myself yawning. Tomorrow I’ll head home. I miss my Traveling Partner, and I miss my studio! My beloved is right though; it isn’t so easy to do this kind of thing in the winter. I take a deep breath of the sea air. The last bonfire on the beach has gone out. The scent of wood smoke is dissipating.
I sit star gazing awhile after the moon sets. I think I’m seeing Antares, maybe? I sigh quietly and yawn. Beginning again can wait for the morning. I get a drink of cold water and head back to bed.
I woke gently a bit later than I might generally. Hardly enough to call it “sleeping in”, though it was lovely to wake quite slowly, making the transition from sleeping to waking so gradually, I wondered for what seemed like a long while whether I was asleep or awake, as I listened to the sounds of the sea through the patio door left cracked open to enjoy the breeze.
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
I yawned and stretched as I rose from the less-than-ideally-comfortable hotel bed. I’m still just a little astonished to have whipped together the ingredients of this brief getaway so quickly. I could not have made it happen without my Traveling Partner’s suggestion, and resolve to see it through. He recognizes a need for self-care when he sees it. (He is a man of great discernment, and loves me deeply.) So, here I am, sipping acceptably ordinary (thoroughly average) coffee, and watching the dark night become the gloom of twilight as daybreak pushes forward through the fog. The tide is coming in – high tide in just a few minutes, actually, but irrelevant to my activities.
I get up between thoughts to layout my easel, my pastels, and bits of things I use when I paint (artist’s tape, wee spongy smudgers of various sizes, finger cots to protect my skin from some of the less safe pigments). Real cadmium, cobalt, mercury, nickel, manganese, arsenic, antimony, and (less commonly these days) lead pigments come at a cost – and it’s not included in the price tag on the box. To one degree or another, quite a few of the beautiful colors in an artists paint box may be poisonous or toxic to some degree, and insidious because those effects are cumulative over time. Maybe Van Gogh’s suffering was due to lead poisoning? We may never know – but for fucks’ sake don’t lick your g’damn paint brushes, and use appropriate safety gear! Wash your hands well after you clean up. Keep a tidy studio (and don’t let children randomly wander there alone). Dust and vacuum!
…I’m not telling you what to do; those reminders are for me.
I sip my coffee listening to the gulls beyond the balcony. I find myself wondering, and not for the first time, how much of my own disturbed inner life is a byproduct of being an artist? Oh surely not the head trauma; that’s got an obvious cause, and it isn’t cadmium. Same with the PTSD; I know where that came from. I know better than to lick a paint brush to moisten and narrow the point… but when I first started in watercolors, I sometimes did do that. I know to mask up for work with any sort of paint that is volatile, and have rarely ever used such things, but rather carelessly when I was much younger and struggling to afford paints, and working in oils, I’d sometimes buy left-behind art supplies at estate sales and flea markets. (This can go very wrong, and at no time in art history have lead white, Scheele’s green, or Naples yellow ever been actually safe to use.) To this day, my favorite deep reds and bright orange hues are cadmium pigments. Working in acrylic, most of this just isn’t a bother; the pigment is safely coated by the medium, which is basically plastic. Working in pastels, however, I am touching raw pigment, pressed into shapes, and used directly, every time I paint. I wear finger cots. I wash my hands. I’m careful with dust and work in a well-ventilated area. I still wonder.
…I also still paint.
I watch day brighten the bay. Shades of gray, almost as if in black and white. Subtle. A bit gloomy, perhaps. The plaintive cries of the gulls hints at the obvious; there is no one on the beach this morning. Not nearby, anyway. Far down the beach, where the bay meets the oceans, there are a handful of dedicated fisherman. No one else. No one walking. No dogs. Just the sea, and the gray of the sky above and the bay below. Seems suited to spending the day on self-reflection, self-care, and painting. Call it “art therapy” and leave me to get on with it, eh? lol
I sigh to myself contentedly. First things first; a better cup of coffee and a bagel. Then… painting. I’ll say something obvious before I wrap this up. I am here, now, doing this thing because I came here. Start where you are (you don’t really have a choice). Don’t like where you are? Go somewhere else, and start there. Taking the future in hand, living my own life has reliably meant doing the verbs. Doing them myself. Making real choices. Some with deep prolonged contemplation – but others, now and then, quite spontaneously. One thing remains reliably true; I can only start where I happen to be, presently. I can begin again any time.
I finish my cup of weak-ass hotel coffee and check the time. Yep. Definitely time to begin again.
I can smell the ocean, and the briny muddy scent of Siletz Bay, in the darkness beyond the balcony. I hear voices down on the beach, and on the adjacent balconies, hidden from view. This was unexpected. The “how was your day, how was therapy?” conversation turned into my beloved sharing some deals on coastal hotel rooms… and a question to answer; would I like to take off for a night (or two) and grab some solo time to paint? Well… fuck yeah,
[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]
The view of the bay. long exposure.
The drive was unmemorable, which, I guess, is a good thing. Could be worse. I’m here, now. It is evening. I pause as I get ready for bed – long drinks of cold water, deep breaths of ocean air balcony door thrown wide to the briny breeze. I enjoy the fourth floor room, it has a great view, but getting the bags up here was… exhausting. Yes, there’s an elevator. There was also a bit of a trek to the one remaining parking space. lol I’m not bitching, nor making excuses, just saying… I didn’t plan for this, and I’ve managed to use up some spoons making it happen.
…But oh, damn, come the dawn, and I’ve already got my easel set up, my pastels sorted, the coffee machine ready to coffee me up first thing. I am eager…
…And I miss my Traveling Partner, as the night goes quiet. I sigh to myself. He’s close. There’s safety in that relative proximity. I could run to his arms at any hour, should the night terrors come after me in this quiet place. I feel reassured by the knowledge that he would welcome me, at any hour.
I yawn. Breathe, exhale, relax. Listen to the sea.
