25 days to the US presidential election, and this one matters so much it’s more than a little nerve-wracking. I find myself weirdly irked, day after day, by the media coverage seeking to persuade, reveal, discourage, manipulate, and engage consumers (and voters) – and sometimes not for the superficial reasons that seem most obvious. Sometimes it’s just about getting eyeballs on those ads. It’s annoying. Still… this really matters. This election matters possibly more than any other in my lifetime. We’re choosing between a party increasingly defined (in my opinion) by fascism, misogyny, and fraud, and a party that seems to intend to truly do an effective (and bipartisan) job of governing the nation for everyone living within its borders (which a puzzling number of people don’t appear to support?).
I don’t think making an attempt to convince you that voting for frank rampant grift and lies is a mistake will be helpful (or successful). I expect you should already be able to discern that as a voting-age adult. If you can’t, I probably don’t want to talk to you at all, honestly. I find it really distressing to be face-to-face with that kind of disturbing lack of understanding of how terrible the outcomes are for so many people when we put rapists/wanna-be dictators in the Oval Office. Please vote, though? Cast your official opinion at the ballot box, and let’s hope for the best for America’s daughters and sons in the years ahead.
…For fucks’ sake, do not take it for granted that “the good guys will win” – it’s not a given! Please don’t yield to ennui and shrug off this election as “it doesn’t matter anyway” – it truly does matter. Your voice needs to be heard at the ballot box. (Social media is loud, but that’s not where you go to vote.) Please check today whether you are registered to vote. Get registered if you are not registered now. Find out today where your closest location to cast your ballot will be, if you are limited to in-person voting in your state. If you’re going to need to take time off to cast your vote, request it now. Don’t let anything stop you from making this vote! It really does matter that much.
It’s very much a shame that our elections have grown so tainted with cynicism and undermined by profit-chasing, and personal-gain-seeking. We have a chance to change that every time we vote. Vote for people who legitimately care about ethical governance. Vote for people of good character. Vote for people who are the most likely to do the most good for the greatest number of human beings. Stop voting for treasonous assholes whose favorite arguments are based on lies, name-calling, and insults. Stop voting for people who are bought and paid for by foreign powers. Stop voting for hucksters shilling the next shiny object that is going to fatten their bank accounts – and the bank accounts of billionaires – while leaving you broke and wondering how to pay the rent. Vote for the politician that has a record of honesty, of fairness, and of documented concern for real-world issues that affect real people (even real people who are not you). Just… do your best. Do it because it matters. Do it in a way that shows you understand how much it does matter.
Stop being sucked in by media hype and marketing buzzwords. Stop being bamboozled by the latest bullshit conspiracy. Think critically. This election could change the world – make your vote in favor of truly changing the world for the better.
This morning I walked in the dark, with the light of my headlamp making a small visible circle ahead of me, bobbing along with my steps. I walked with my thoughts, and not much else. I was thinking about a question I’d proposed to myself recently (“How does my partner see me, in the abstract, and how does this differ from the woman I am?”), but this morning, I flipped it around and asked myself “who do I understand my Traveling Partner to be, in my recollections, when we are not together, and how does that differ from my lived experience with him when we are together?” It seems useful to understand the variances that may exist, and maybe where those may come from, and what purpose they serve (or problems they may create). Am I holding space for my Traveling Partner to be the man he truly is? Do I love that man, or just a fantasy of who I think he may be? Do I give him the freedom (and support) to change over time and become the man he most wants to be? Do I have an opportunity to be a better lover, friend and partner through understanding him more…accurately? Am I making it more difficult for us to really enjoy each other by holding on to romanticized adolescent notions of the man he is – or worse perhaps, not recognizing his real self with gratitude and delight because I’ve “got baggage”? These seem to be worthwhile questions. I walked along reflecting on them.
The days continue to shorten, and I finished my walk in darkness and hustled on to the office to start the work day. Writing had to wait on a later moment; there were more important things to do, and to think about, as I began this day. I never saw the sun rise, and when it eventually did it rose on a gray cloudy day that looks like it might rain. I wouldn’t call it “bland and uninteresting”, but it wasn’t the colorful display of recent mornings, at all.
Yesterday, I was still pretty under the weather, and I had managed to pass on the ick to my Traveling Partner, likely by way of my happy-to-be-home kiss and embrace on Sunday morning, just based on timing. I’m already pretty much over it – sufficiently so to feel comfortable going in to the office today. I’m hopeful that he’ll soon be over it, too. It sucked having to reschedule his appointments, around which my away plans had been built in the first place. lol Change is. Reality does not give a shit about my damned plans.
…Later…
I took a break. Enjoyed a moment to catch up with a colleague I rarely see in person. Exchanged some cute “stickers” via messaging with my Traveling Partner. Tackled some priority workload. Finally found myself once again in this other here and now, feeling just a bit as if it is a sort of “alternate reality” in which I am always relaxed, thoughtful, and contented. lol. “Living the dream.”
I’m sipping my coffee, waiting for the sun. I’ll enjoy the sunrise, finish loading the car, and then head for home. I miss my Traveling Partner, and it’s time. My coffee is quite good this morning; it’s left from yesterday’s very excellent coffee, purchased on my way to a beach walk not too far away. I knew I’d want a good cup of coffee this morning, early, and it was honestly too late in the morning for coffee drinking when I bought it – so I got a 20 oz Americano, black, and enjoyed something less than half of that with the plan of saving the rest for this morning. It has proven to be a good plan. 😀
I’m more or less packed. I’m showered. Dressed. There’s no particular reason to linger, besides this handful of words, a moment for meditation, and the coming sunrise. Very low stress, as mornings go. I’d intended to get a bit closer to sleeping in, but my eagerness to see my partner overcame any potential for further sleep around 05:00 a.m.. LOL Hardly counts as sleeping in, but whatever. I’m rested. I’m content to enjoy my coffee, and this quiet moment.
A productive weekend, creatively.
The time away has been well-spent, creatively speaking. 9 new pastels, a couple of them exceed my expectations and quite delight me. All of them are adequately satisfying to meet my needs. Another 9 hours or so, over 3 evenings, spent studying the art of pastel and a variety of techniques commonly used. 4 or 5 hours spent walking the beaches. An hour or so spent getting my hair cut. Unmeasured time spent chatting with my Traveling Partner because we often miss each other more than I enjoy my solitude. Time well-spent, indeed.
…Not one single nap, at all, how strange…
… I’m wrong. lol I forgot about my unexpected early evening nap the night I checked in. Good grief, I was sooo tired.
…Now it’s time to begin again, to go home, and hopefully to take with me renewed enthusiasm for the day-to-day, and restored resilience for the things that will go wrong – because things definitely will. lol It’s a very human experience.
I reflect on the days now behind me. Did I get what I was looking for? What I needed? I think so, yeah. I breathe, exhale, and relax. Now I’m just waiting for the sunrise, and drinking my coffee. I’m ready to begin again.
Imagine for a moment that you are a traveler on a long journey, arriving at an airport perhaps, after a long flight. You’re groggy from lack of sleep, long hours, and you are deeply fatigued. You’re in a strange busy place, noisy with unfamiliar language, brightly lit, chaotic – and you are hungry. Hungry and fatigued, to the point of tears, in a foreign place. You don’t speak the local language. You enter a Strange Diner, are provided a seat, served a beverage, and given a menu. The menu is… vast. Huge like an unfolded paper map. The print is tiny. You don’t read the language, or understand it when spoken to you. Everything is strange. You feel a little lost by the incomprehensible selection on the menu in front of you. You look around at what other diners are having, point to a picture, figure it’ll do and hope for the best.
Eventually, over time and repeated return visits to the Strange Diner, you learn to fold the menu accordion-style, as you see other diners doing. You pick up some of the language a little at a time, and figure out the characters that make up the language on the menu. You learn the table manners by watching other diners, and you pick up some of the culture and behavior of “the locals”. You begin to conform. Conformity is comfortable. The menu seems more manageable folded small, revealing only the few familiar options you feel safest with. Comfort feels… comfortable. Safe. Easier.
…There is so much you haven’t explored, so much you don’t know, because you’ve chosen conformity, comfort, and safety, again and again, in the Strange Diner. Most people do. This Strange Diner is your life. The menu is as vast and interesting as you allow it to be. It is as narrow and predictable as you insist on it becoming. You are making choices.
What might happen if you were to unfold the menu? Maybe just a fold or two at first, a peek at other options, other flavors, other experiences… other choices. Life’s menu is vast (so vast) – there is so much to choose from, and each new choice could open still another folded section of that menu to reveal still more experiences to choose from. There is so much to see, do, and experience. So much “flavor” to life that you’ll never taste, however boldly you choose from this vast menu; there isn’t enough time in a single mortal life to taste it all.
Many years ago, when I was first “trying things from the menu” as an artist, I decided against pastels. My first choices were based first on ignorance (I really knew very little about art, generally, or painting specifically – only that I wanted to do this thing). Later I made choices based on my assumptions about various mediums – and myself as an artist. I like things “easy”, there’s no point saying otherwise. I folded the menu, concealing the options to do with pastels (and sculpture, lithography, anything to do with fine metal work… lots of stuff disappeared from view based on how I folded that menu). I simply didn’t consider them. I was a different sort of artist, and I focused on the menu items I was most comfortable with, myself. I made my reasons make sense to me – and I made my choices. I wasn’t even unhappy about it, not at all – it all made sense to me. That was enough. I enjoyed my art. I didn’t give pastels another thought – that section of menu was concealed from me by my own hand, and it disappeared from view. “Out of sight, out of mind” – quite literally. Life (and art) moved on. The menu stayed folded.
Recently, it became clear that my physical limitations were becoming a constraint on my artistic work. Big canvases yielded to smaller ones. Homeownership placed firm limitations on storage space – and work space. More choices. The menu folded, again. Still more recently, circumstances put a new choice in front of me; give up my studio to make room for my Traveling Partner’s son to move in for some temporary-but-undetermined time, or go without help caring for my Traveling Partner while he recovers from surgery. Well, shit. Not much of a choice, but doing so would constrain my artistic “freedom” still further… wouldn’t it? Over days, I considered the “folded menu” (metaphorically) in my hands in life’s Strange Diner…
…So, I carefully unfolded it, revealing so many artistic options I had mostly given no thought to… I could return to working in watercolor, on paper… why had I given that up? What about pen & ink… drawing instead of painting? Fused glass? Origami? The menu quakes in shaking hands, reminding me that choices have consequences, and not all choices are a great fit for the need of the moment – or the artist that I am. Like someone with a bad case of munchies on a limited budget, I stared at that menu for… days. I thought about the options. How they might fit into my experience. Was it too late for a change? (The equivalent of giving up on it as “not really hungry after all”, I suppose.)
Tucked in a little box, in the corner of a drawer, hidden behind my carefully kept watercolors (it’s a very nice set that I rarely use but definitely love)… a small box of iridescent hard pastels, never used. Why do I even have these? I still wonder… My Traveling Partner and I watched a video – serendipity is definitely a condiment in the Strange Diner, it sits on every table. Pastels appear on the menu in that moment when serendipity hints at something more to a small unused box of pastels that has gathered dust in a box of art supplies since the early 80s. It no longer matters why I bought those then, what matters is what I choose to do about them, now.
The menu takes on new color – quite literally – as I consider pastels. Oil pastels? Soft Pastels? What brand? What colors? What surfaces and what tools? As exciting as trying an exotic new dessert, I make new choices, and try new “flavors”. By July, I’ve given up my studio at home, and purchased a basic set of soft pastels to “try out”. I’ve built a playlist of artists’ video tutorials, and gathered some useful reading material. I study the new medium thoughtfully. On July 10th, I paint my first small piece using the new medium, and distract myself from my timidity by doing it while I was on a conference call during a work day, letting the medium guide the work.
“Recollection of a Sunset” 3″ x 6″ soft pastel on La Carte Pastel Card, 2024 (I’m not saying it was good, just that it was first.)
It’s now been 86 days – and 16 new paintings. It’s hard to imagine working in any other medium at this point in my life as an artist – a bit as if I’d eaten nothing but burgers and fries in the Strange Diner all my life, then finally tried real French cuisine and fallen in love with food all over again. Artistically, this is very much what has happened. I am changed – because I chose change. I opened the menu to reveal new options. There are soooo many options. The menu in the Strange Diner is disturbingly vast. It’s no great surprise that most of us live our lives keeping that menu folded up quite compactly. It’s more convenient. Less overwhelming. It’s generally enough – but there is more. So much more.
Anyway… I’m just saying; you’ve got options. No matter the circumstances. Whatever has stalled you. Whatever is holding you back or limiting your apparent choices – there is more to the menu in your hand. Unfold it. Take a look. See what life has to offer you from the menu of this Strange Diner. Try something new. Maybe you regret it. Maybe you don’t care for it. Maybe it’s too spicy or too bland. Maybe it’s too strange or not a great solution for you in this moment. You do have choices, though, and life has not revealed all there is to know. Not yet; you’ve still got that menu all folded up for convenience. Go ahead – unfold it.
It’s shortly after midnight. I’m awake, not because it’s Friday night and I stayed up late doing something. Nope. I went to bed a bit early, in spite of the somewhat noisier Friday night guests, and crashed pretty hard. I slept deeply for a little while, but woke several times to discover I’d pulled my CPAP mask off in my sleep. Weird. I’m not surprised that woke me each time that it did; I struggle to fall asleep without the mask these days, in spite of it giving me occasional nightmares of having to wear MOPP gear. Not an experience I ever enjoyed, and not a bad dream I want to have. Tonight wasn’t about that, though, it was just weird. lol
I woke a little while ago, and my consciousness roused sufficiently to recognize more than that I had removed my CPAP mask – I recognized the likely cause(s). Acid reflux. Headache. Osteoarthritis. The exceptionally quiet darkness after a rather noisy evening. Now I’m awake. I took an antacid. I got a drink of water. I put on a capsaicin patch where my pain was worst. I took something for my headache. I got up and stood on the balcony looking out into the velvety dark night, out across the bay, feeling the cool air on my skin, and looking out into the night for some little while. No moon. Few stars – fog? Mist? Clouds? Across the bay, most of the homes along the Salishan Spit are dark tonight, which surprises me at this relatively early hour. No bobbing lights of shallow bottom boats on the bay. The tide is coming in. I stand awhile, listening, watching, embracing the solitude and the darkness.
It’s been a good couple days of painting. I’ve got another day of it, tomorrow. I miss my Traveling Partner – I’ll be happy to head home Sunday. I stand in the quiet darkness wondering how to bring “more of this” to my experience of life at home. I often wake during the night, at home, but rarely get up or doing anything much about it. Shared living subtly discourages it; I don’t want to wake anyone else. When I live alone, I often do something more than roll over and go back to sleep. Funny thing is, when I’m living alone, I don’t easily “just go back to sleep” – so getting up makes sense, and I do. No stress to it, just a way of living. When I am sharing a living arrangement, I tend not to be awake enough long enough to bother. I go back to sleep because going back to sleep makes sense. There’s no effort to it, these days, and no anxiety to being awake. I don’t actually know why there’s a difference in these experiences (for me). Perhaps living with my Traveling Partner simply finds me feeling somehow safer when I wake in the night, and more able to return to sleep because of it. I don’t generally “toss and turn” if I wake… I just go back to sleep, maybe after getting up to pee, or get a drink of water. Weird. I chuckle quietly to myself, that’s a known thing; humans are weird. lol
…The “more of this”, though, that I’d like to bring home with me, isn’t about the wakefulness in the night. I’m satisfied to roll over and go back to sleep, at home, in my own bed. I’m not grousing about that at all. It’s more… the art, the sense of creative presence and inspiration, the subtle feeling of freedom to “do whatever I want” in all the minutes of my day. Perhaps this really is best left to vacations and time away, alone… it sounds pretty “selfish” on paper, and a somewhat adolescent perspective on adult freedom – untethered from the very real responsibilities of adulthood that most definitely exist. I sit with the thought awhile, after I step back in from the chilly darkness of the balcony. I think about compromise. I think about choices.
I’ll go back to bed soon. I’m already both tired and sleepy. I’m only awake because my thoughts continue to meander wakefully, and I’m honestly sort of encouraging that, in spite of my awareness that sleep could easily overtaken me, given a chance. It feels like a luxury to enjoy the quiet of the night. The world sleeps, the moment is mine…
Evening Light 