Drinking Sake from the bottle,( I snuck it out of the new Japanese kind of fast food and Udon Noodle restaurant in San Rafael. ) Alan’s down stairs playing with the babies. I can here older kids outside yelling, “I can see you”. The neighbors hung balloons at the entrance of Baywood Terrace. When I drive by tonight I say, “They’re having a party and we weren’t even invited” I had the strangest day with the babies. We stayed home all day. It’s been a crazy week. Alan had to work on the black mold in the garage bathroom; a copper pipe on our water heater corroded, water seeped though the sheetrock. It stunk. But me and the babies laid low. In the morning they watched cartoons(way longer than pediatrics recommend) I work on my book. Read through all my pieces from the past four years. I only used pieces from the past two years in my new book, since Jack and Fiona were born. I wrote pieces for graduate school, where I found my writing voice in Afro-futurism and Contemporary Art classes. Then in the 2013’s I wrote about going crazy, infertility, and the twitch. Most of those pieces were in journals that I have incorporated into several collages. I think I should use those in my remaining notebook entries. They are crazy and raw, but paint has splattered on them now, they are all torn up. I am 46 years old, I have three year old twins. My mom’s death in 2008, Christopher, my miscarriage, and infertility came up a lot since I started my blog two years ago. With the birth of Jack and Fiona letting information that I had to share pour out of me. I use the internet, Facebook and WordPress to share my work, communicate with the world. I have been working in my studio like crazy. I think Jack and Fiona actually respect me Being an artist. I have been trying to teach them about writing. I showed them a paperback and showed them the computer screen. I said that’s what happens first before it’s a book. I can show them the printing of some pages next time. But they respected it. Drinking Sake straight from the bottle is not bad, not bad at all. Nigori. I want to go check out my studio. I am so excited about getting my pieces photographed. It’s gonna be cool. What else can I say? I’m a painter and a momma and a wife. I have a dog and live in San Rafael. I’m a dreamer and a drifter. (in my before kids life) Do you know me yet?
Category: Facebook
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Jacks watching Sponge Bob, it’s such a strange show. Funny and strange. I never watched sponge bob as a kid. I went into my studio to paint today. I worked on my notebooks with golds, purples, charcoal, big paintbrushes, drips and fine lines. A portrait, I call “Mirror Image”. I write on it, I scratch on it. I love it. Maybe it’s the cover of my book. The most amazing thing is happening to me. My book editing is influencing my painting. My painting editing; gathering my works to get photographed tomorrow is influencing my book layout. The pictures have become an integral part of the book, the emotion, they mirror the writing, the writing mirrors the paintings, it all mirrors me and I mirror it all. It’s like I’m in the HOUSE OF MIRRORS. The paintings start to mirror the other paintings. The babies mirror me. The writing mirrors the babies and the babies mirror the writings. The NOTEBOOKS are the glue that holds the whole body of work and of SELF together. The blog is community, a vast ecosystem where I let words and images trickle out into the giant internet ocean. This is gonna be epic for me. My website has been SO under used. I am going to fully avail to all that is available to me to get this project out with a bang. I’ve been working on this for so many years, all of it. Everything I’ve done has led me here. Everywhere I’ve been has led me to this beautiful, full circle OPEN place I am right now. Nap Time Paintings, you taught me so much. All the teachings I ever had have converged in NapTime Paintings and NOTEBOOKS. The babies, being a mom. Everything I’ve done has led me here, my blue finger nails, bleach blond hair. My suburban, yoga, minivan, mama of Marin. My beautiful stiff, strong body and soul. It’s laid out, raw and bare for all to see.
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Liberation
Coffee; 12:21 Friday afternoon. Cold November night made way for a sunny day. First day able to be in my studio in a while. I stand an empty apple juice container up; Mold has formed along one side. Dark green with bits of brown. I am protected from the cap. I forgot to put a cap on my black acrylic paint the last day the babies took a nap, when I came in my studio to work and saw on my “Never Trump” sign, “Never Give Up” imbedded in my message of Protest. I made it through yesterday: Parents meeting, (I was so grumpy I thought about not going, but it helped me so much). I told the facilitator, “I need to go back to therapy”. I took Jack and Fiona to the park. I let Jack eat Yogurt with his excavator, after he played with it in the sand box. I let Fiona smear yogurt on the ground then draw with her finger like I’ve been teaching her with various substances. I’ve been a great mom. I met a man this morning on the trail walking our dogs, I didn’t even wonder if he voted for Trump. I’ve concluded that it doesn’t matter anymore. With the men that Donald Trump has hired this week for Government jobs, it is crystal clear that this government philosophy, the power and masterminds behind it, has been in the making for years, forever, for as long as America has been America. There has been a strong movement towards peace, civil rights, and the environment, but that side hasn’t won yet. After every traumatic, life altering event I am forever changed. My innocence and optimism concerning the world we live in and the human race changes. The idea of life itself. Sitting in the back yard yesterday with Jack and Fiona, we noticed a green bag that used to house the jumpy house hanging on the fence full. “Is the Jumpy house in there?” asks Jack. “No, remember, the Jumpy house got a hole in it”. I take the bag down and open it revealing forgotten toys. Jack grabs the Fire Truck and the plastic bat. Fiona didn’t run to the toys, she sits and watches me explain things. She asks me questions and repeats what I say. I see a tick on Billys face. Fiona looks close as I explain, “Ticks burrow into the skin and suck blood. They get huge and fall off. They have diseases, I need to get Billy some medicine”. Fiona follows me to the closet, up the step ladder behind me. Telling me about the tick, about putting medicine on Billy. Jack asks me about the bat. He’s noticing the line from the mold. “It’s made in a factory, that’s the mold line” I tell Jack. I wonder if I should show him a picture of children working in a factory in China making plastic baseball bats. A plastic baseball bat that sits in the back yard un-used for most of the time. That will never disintegrate, that bat will be on this Earth for the rest of time. I walk back into the house and pass the children’s easel with a pad and scribbles and crayons, I feel myself coming back. Emerging into my space on Earth. My reality. Glug, Glug, Glug. I just poured myself a glass of red wine. It’s 12:48pm. I have a potential of three hours to work in my studio, if Jack and Fiona take their nap today. I miss sharing my naptime paintings on Facebook, but I am so relieved to be out of that atmosphere. I miss so many people on there too, seeing their up-dates, paintings, but I don’t miss the constant negativity, and look, it did us no good! We influence very few by posting the negative stuff Trump and his cronies do. I am going back to the drawing board. Back to before IPhones and Facebook. I have changed.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 