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Back to Life

September 22, 2026 //
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I dance around the room on stiff legs, feeling the sore muscles of a good weekend of painting, and starting the packing. It’s a different playlist this morning, different songs, and a different path – back to life, back to reality. Four new paintings – not a bad weekend of painting. I’m pleased with the work. The coffee in the room isn’t terrible this morning, either – it’s almost good. It’s definitely coffee.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

Home this morning, later. Each time I pass the new work as I move between tasks, I feel “lifted”. I feel restored and recharged and satisfied. It’s not the satisfaction of cheesecake, or even of good coffee. It isn’t the satisfaction of good sex. It seems very much it’s own thing, most closely similar to the satisfaction of “coming up for air” after reading a really great book… only… I “wrote the book”, too. I only achieve this feeling from painting, and occasionally from writing (poetry, generally, when that happens). Is it about creating – or expressing? I’m not sure. Maybe answering that riddle will “break the spell”?

One measure of satisfaction.

I sigh to myself happily. Oh definitely actually happy; it is a wonderful feeling, however fleeting. It is no wonder people chase this emotion (although that’s no way to achieve it). I sip my coffee and reflect on the weekend. It has had some lovely high points.

Serendipity and timing; getting that lucky shot isn’t something to plan.

I still can’t quite believe I slept in so effortlessly, every morning, waking to the sound of gulls and morning sunshine, or the alarm for my morning medication, or some other “not early” event. It was delightful. I was unsurprised and did not resist when I woke at my usual time this morning, well ahead of the sun. I got up, showered, dressed, and got a walk in, down on the beach in the darkness (with my headlamp on). The tide was out, and the broad expanse of firm beach let me get a good mile or so of walking before my coffee. The resumed routines click into place like dominoes made of comfort and familiarity.

…Echoes of my painting playlist still ring in my memory…

I’m out of coffee, and don’t feel like upsetting my tummy with black tea. I decide to walk down to the closest cafe, which makes an excellent cup of coffee, and maybe a breakfast sandwich? I give that some thought, staring out the open balcony door at the misty foggy morning beyond the hotel. A good day to return home, I think to myself, lacing up my boots. I gather a couple packed items already ready for loading into the car; if I take them down with me now, it’ll feel less like hustling later.

Foggy misty morning. Time to go home.

Back with coffee, and a small fresh almond croissant – I don’t think I’d have believed these were made in-house if I hadn’t seen her rolling out layers of pastry dough yesterday afternoon, and seen them pulled from the oven this morning. The pleasing, somewhat grainy coarseness of the marzipan suggests that, too, was made right there. It’s a treat, and I savor it with my coffee and watch sea gulls on invisible air currents watching me, in case I might decide to share.

It is clear this pigeon considers this balcony “theirs”.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. A wee bite of breakfast and a good cup of coffee help get me going for the day, for real. There’s packing yet to do, and maybe I have time to paint just one more piece… I think about it and sip my coffee. I remind myself that I don’t need to be here, to paint; my studio is well-equipped for it. I didn’t even come here for inspiration – I brought an ample supply with me. I simply needed a bit of a break, and some solo time. I could have come here for inspiration – and surely would have found it – but that was not the need being addressed this time. I needed time in my own head, uninterrupted, focused, creative time spent immersed in the processes to do with painting. One challenge my Traveling Partner and I share is my apnea; I’m as prone to sometimes just not breathing when I’m awake, as I am when I sleep. It’s been that way for some unknown measure of time, and while the CPAP machine is a great solution for sleep apnea, it’s not particularly well-suited to daytime hours. The result is that I sometimes stop breathing while I’m deeply engaged in painting (or thinking, or reading), and as my SpO2 level drops and my body begins to do what bodies do when someone isn’t breathing, the signs of physical stress (unnoticed by me, often), get to my Traveling Partner and cause him stress, too. We are social mammals. We’re made to detect stress in “the herd”.

[Note: I’m not a doctor, nor am I a biologist, nor scientist armed with rigorous research, just a human being, being human, and noticing some things – don’t make important life decisions based on what some blogger said!]

The result of me not breathing goes beyond the eventual stress it will also cause to my beloved, himself; he will seek me out, interrupt whatever I am doing, and remind me to breathe. He’s not being mean or undermining my focus deliberately for some ill purpose, he’s taking care of me (and himself). It is also an interruption, and it does mess with my creative headspace, and that can make it hard to paint and enjoy the experience. (So, um, breathe, bitch, jeez.) Staying “too aware” of my breathing can also undermine my creative focus. It is a difficult path to follow. …But this fragile vessel does need oxygen. That’s pretty much non-negotiable. I smile to myself, grateful to have a partner who really does care whether I live or die. It’s a nice feeling to be loved.

I look over the new work again, before gently packing it for the trip home. This is always a process I face with a hint of concern, working in pastels. The work is relatively fragile, especially compared to the highly durable nature of acrylic work. I worried it will become smudged or scraped, or bent, or damaged in some way before I can place it somewhere carefully until it is framed. Oh, not worried enough to wreck a lovely morning, but there in the back of my mind is always that bit of concern. I know to work with care, when I pack them.

I sip my coffee contentedly. Gratefully. It’s been a splendid break. I think I found some shards and lost bits of myself over the course of these few days. Handy, and also worth further reflection. A stripe of blue sky tears the dense gray clouds with a bit of color. Pretty. A good time to begin again, I suppose…

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, The Art of Being, women, Words

Baptism by the Sea

September 20, 2026 //
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Or, more specifically, in it. It was the “joyful noise” that distracted me from what I was doing, which was a less than ideally productive bit of messing about with a painting I already knew had “failed” – so I was working and overworking it, trying to find something in it worth keeping. I did not. The noise down on the beach wafted up at regular intervals. Cheering. Clapping. A crowd of merry-makers. It is, after all, a beach, and it is the end of summer.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

My back was aching, anyway. I stood and stretched to take a break and step out onto the balcony to see the source of the noise. A dense gathering of people, on day I might not expect so large a crowd unless for a planned event (like the kite flying event going on further up the beach this weekend). I watch and listen. I can’t make out the words, other than an occasional call for “the next” to come into the water. There the crowd, on the edge of the water. The bay is very shallow and it is low tide (just 12 minutes ago). There is a man separated from the crowd, further out, where the (very) shallow bay reaches waist deep on an average-sized man, which this one appears to be. He raises his arms to the sky, calls to the next person, they come to him in the water – and he dunks them in. The crowd goes wild with cheers, clapping, and calls of “hallelujah!”. Full immersion baptism is still a thing in some Christian denominations. (I can’t say I really “understand”, but understanding is not what religions are about.)

…I rather question doing that sort of thing in the muddy water of Siletz Bay, but it isn’t my religion, and I really just don’t have a horse in that race…

I stand on the balcony watching for a little while. I find myself wondering why the many followers of the god of Abraham, Isaac, and Moses Jacob* don’t all recognize each other on the path? Why are they at odds, ever? The ink on a set of holy documents is barely dry before older sects decry the false gods and heresies of a religion that just seems like more of the same to me, with my outsider’s perspective. Fighting like poorly behaved siblings, and very much in need of a nap. Real community develops around shared ideas (and suspicions), but it is a shame so much damage is done in the world over religion(s).

A September morning at Siletz Bay, and no hint that a sunny afternoon is ahead.

I take a breath of the clean sea air. The afternoon is warm after a chilly, overcast, misty morning. When did that change occur, I find myself wondering. I had been “distracted” from watching the clouds and the changing tide, focused on a small 5″ x 7″ piece of carefully prepared board, on which I had been utterly failing to achieve anything that could actually be called “art’. The colors came out muddy and imprecise, and the lack of precision wasn’t the serendipitous sort I often count on, it was more the failed chaos of the lack of clarity of mind that sometimes comes “as a side” with inspiration (for me). Too many ideas, and I failed to select the focal point of the work with sufficient care. The piece doesn’t know what it wants to be, at all, and our dialogue fails to reach an understanding between thought and execution.

Afternoon sunshine, ripples on water.

…The warm afternoon sunshine cares nothing about such things. I make a cup of tea and take it out onto the balcony, to listen to the waves as the tide turns…

I briefly consider taking pictures of the baptism ceremony happening on the beach below me, and decide against it. Isn’t part of what’s gone wrong in the world the loss of privacy from too many of our personal moments being photographed by (or for) strangers and unseen cameras? Turning our lived moments into “content” for the broader consumption of others is a little weird, is it not? Were I participating in such a moving personal moment as my baptism into a religion, I would certainly not want to discover later that it was published somewhere, in an article I had no opportunity to see or consider, putting me on display for anyone at any moment. Nope. I would not care for that at all. So… I put my camera down, and sipped my tea instead.

A recent sunrise near home. A moment of lived experience that will never be repeated quite as it was.

We make moments. We make art. These are very human things. Lived experience. You know what “AI” doesn’t have? Any of that. No comprehension. No emotion. No pleasure in a moment of lived experience. No context. No compersion. No joy. No ability to grow wisdom through failure – because there is no understanding. I watch the sun beginning the slow summer journey from afternoon to eventual nightfall. It’ll come when it comes. Watching a sunset on a warm summer afternoon is also a very human experience. However many times you might get an AI to describe a sunset, it has never seen one. You may not like everything about every group of people, but do you really want to abdicate human decision-making about human lives to some thoughtless algorithm that doesn’t understand the consequences of its decisions and can’t comprehend the outcome? That can’t ever understand the emotional and real-world cost of taking human lives? I sip my tea and think my thoughts as I watch the human beings on the beach doing human things. Living their lives.

An unexpected visitor.

Gulls sail past on eddies of air currents invisible to me. They watch me sitting on the balcony, expectantly. Will I, perhaps, bring something tasty out onto the balcony and carelessly look away? They are practiced at this. I can see from the spatterings of bird poop on the balcony rail that this is a stopping point for one or more of these birds. (Earlier this morning, I turned and found myself facing a lone pigeon sitting on the rail. Gulls are bigger, but it’s no surprise when they stop on the balcony or on the rail – tourists mean snacks..) I watch the small fishing boats out in the choppy waters at the mouth of the bay. This is a popular spot for fishers.

I sip my tea, and think about love. The moment feels eternal. I’m not in any hurry, and I can’t hear the clock ticking at all. 🙂

*and a quick “thanks!” for my Traveling Partner, who definitely knows more about Christianity than I do!!

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, Relationships, The Art of Being, The Big 5, thoughts on AI, Words

Art and Laundry

September 8, 2026 //
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I spent beautiful hours in my studio yesterday, productive, creative time. More importantly, it was time spent painting things I lack words for. Art is good for that.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

There are many people who think they “don’t like” (visual) art, or don’t understand it. When I hear that, I often wonder if they have ever given thought to the idea that art is quite personal. Between the work as a practical thing and the perspective on the piece that each individual brings to seeing it, the understanding exists as a thing of its own. Every piece is not for every person. Don’t like Jackson Pollock? Okay. There are many other artists. Can I interest you in Monet, Van Gogh, or Peter Max? How about Ronnie Gold or Rothko? Each artist communicating their own way, about what matters to them, and putting it out into the world where a multitude can see it. Each person with their own thoughts and perspective, and potentially taking something from any given work that even the artist did not understand from the piece. That’s how art functions as communication, but whether a particular piece leaves any one individual unmoved is…fine. Also the way art works. Some pieces are not for us.

“Seeing Red”

… I paint things that “aren’t for you” all the time. Sometimes I paint things that are not for me, as well. 😆 I often paint to express something difficult or to process emotions, as a way of getting something “off my chest”, and to say it, to transform it, or to rob it of power over me. For me art is an act of self-care.

I walk down this morning’s trail, thinking about art and eager to be back in the studio again. My Traveling Partner also knows how important time spent painting is for me and he kept nudging me gently toward the studio yesterday, helping me avoid self-care self-sabotage traps (like housekeeping tasks that can wait a day or two). This morning I feel lighter of heart and more contented. I keep walking.

A wispy autumn mist envelopes me as I near the creek. It’s cooler this morning. I’m grateful for the cozy sweater I chose this morning. Laundry is something I can do “while I paint”, but I didn’t finish the task; it is unfolded, still in the laundry basket. This sweater just happened to be on top. lol That seems very human. And isn’t that the thing about art? It is uniquely human. Human ideas, human emotions, human complexities, human stories… “Art” created by AI isn’t actually art.

“Skyline Sunset”

I breathe the chilly morning air. It definitely smells of autumn now. Somewhere in the distance, someone has recently had their fireplace lit; I smell a faint hint of wood smoke in the air. Daybreak comes as I reach my halfway point. Chased by Venus, the crescent moon has been rising as I walk. She’s still visible, but as daylight fills the sky, the moon fades from view. I stop to write, reflect, and meditate. It’s a new day.

My thoughts are filled with paintings I’d like to paint… my studio is waiting on the other side of the work day… it’s a good time to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, autumn, Brain Injury, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, Love, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Oregon Trails, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, thoughts on AI, War and News of War, women, Words

On Death and Impermanence

August 26, 2026 //
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Some time ago, I left myself a note scrawled in a notebook I keep tucked in my handbag.

Write about death, art, what we leave behind, how little anyone will care or remember. Talk about how we yearn, and take, and build, and how little it matters and all of our destruction for what? Admit to the hypocrisy of even writing about it. Ponder meaning and impermanence.

Yeah…or don’t? I read about Dolly Parton dying with little surprise and an unexpected feeling of real sorrow. I don’t listen to her music much, and she still managed to touch my life. How strange.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

I head down the trail in the darkness. Sunrise is a way off yet. By the first hint of daybreak I reach my halfway point, still pondering Dolly Parton. She seemed to have been equally famous for her music and her genuine goodness, and I saw her relationship as a powerful model of what partnership over a lifetime could look like. How often are truly decent good people ever famous? She did a lot in life to spread that around, too.

…In a world where you can choose to be a Donald Trump or a Dolly Parton, wouldn’t being Dolly be by far the better choice? I’m just saying, clearly being a good person didn’t hold Dolly back at all. Choose wisely. The path ahead is your own.

I sit thinking about choices, and kindness, and being the best version of myself I know how to be, in spite of physical pain, in spite of chaos and damage, in spite of circumstances. Dolly made it look easy, but looking at those hairdos and those outfits, and reading some of her backstory, I very much doubt “easy” was part of the package. She did the verbs, though, and this does tend to support the idea that they can be done.

… And she leaves behind her art, as a musician, and so many memories for people whose lives she touched. As legacies go, that’s pretty big. Impermanence is what it is, and someday everything and everyone that ever existed on this earth, and even the very planet herself will be gone, and maybe then, Dolly will be forgotten, along with the rest of us… But for all the time humanity lingers, creating lives and memories on this mud ball hurtling through space, we have a chance to be better than our worst impulses, and to create a world that says something wonderful about who we were, once we’re gone. That seems worthwhile.

I sit with that thought awhile. Daybreak comes. It’s a bit cooler today. I’m grateful for the cool of the morning. It’s likely to be another hot day. I slept well and deeply, waking only once, and rather early in the night, for no obvious reason. I’m rested, but also uncomfortable. It’s mostly just arthritis, and I do my best to let it go with minimal success. I find myself a little aggravated that today is a work day, but also grateful just to have a job at all.

I sigh to myself. Sometimes life feels like an endless series of compromises between equally unpleasant choices, although I know that is an illusion. There are so many more choices available, and my choices to compromise this or that are my own. I smile to myself at the reminder and stretch, feeling my body welcome the movement. I feel okay for most values of “okay”, and it’s a lovely morning to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Art, art and the artist, breathe, Free Will, gratitude, grief, health, Healthy Living, inspiration, meditation, Metaphors, pain, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, women, Words

Pleasantly Uneventful

July 10, 2026 //
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It’s a pretty morning. Nothing fancy, a pretty sunrise, a nice walk on a summer morning, and it is Friday. The morning is chilly, the sky is a clear and soft cerulean blue hue, with faintly yellow edges down low on the horizon.

[No AI is used in writing or editing this blog. This is human content for human readers.]

I walk thinking about stress, anxiety, mental health, and what it takes to thrive when the news of the day is a toxic cocktail of AI slop, advertising, and propaganda with only a sprinkling of actual news thrown in (most of it bad).

… Maybe I should paint more..?

Yesterday evening, background stress I wasn’t explicitly aware I was carrying got identified and called out by my Traveling Partner, gently. Instead of fussing resentfully, I used the opportunity to head to my studio. The timing seemed excellent for it; I’ve been trying to nudge myself to paint more – and more often! This turned out to be a good choice.

Untitled pastel, 5″ x 7″ 2026

Make of it what you will.

I definitely need to paint more! I sigh contentedly from the side of the trail. Beautiful morning, sunshine illuminating the tall oaks and the tidy vineyards. I feel inspired and unbothered.

I breathe, exhale, and relax. Nice morning for meditation. A good morning to begin again.

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Categories Allegories, Anxiety, Art, art and the artist, Brain Injury, breathe, forgiveness, Free Will, gratitude, Healthy Living, inspiration, joy, meditation, Metaphors, Mindfulness, Moments, Perspective, Post Traumatic Stress, Practices, solo hiking, Summer, The Art of Being, The Big 5, women, Words
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