Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes

There’s a fly buzzing above my head. He’s buzzing around looking for something. The only way to get him out is to guide him by light to freedom by dimming the lights in my closet. Then he will fly towards the light, but I would have to get him out the door and close all the doors. I like the smell of the fresh air when the door is open. I Have dried flowers beside me, but right out the door are the first wild daisy flowers of the season. I took a walk in the garden earlier and saw a single light-yellow poppy flower in an old cactus pot in which a tiny cactus is growing from the side, even though I removed the cactus that was in there years ago and transplanted them. There’s still a tiny sprout of everything that ever lived inside me. I want to turn it all upside down, turn over all the stones and instead of looking at things as I always have, I am going to look at the other side of things. When I was a teenager and I did the things, I did there must have been something that drove me there, showed me the way. Something inside me. I’ve looked at these things, dangerous things as me having some kind of defect. Mentally ill. Unhinged. But the whole experience wasn’t without value to me, even if I could have lost my life.

Today I went out to lunch with my mother in law. I was hungry and wanted to stay on my low cholesterol diet. I decided ahead of time that I would have salmon on spinach and a cocktail. We were having such a great time I had two cocktails and a brownie dessert with gelato. It was amazing. We talked about Ireland and the land my mother in law grew up on. It felt good to be with her without the babies. We have a strange spiritual relationship, I’m atheist and she’s Catholic. But she often says I’m more spiritual than I realize.

It’s not easy eating a low cholesterol diet all the time, it’s not easy knowing that I have choice about what I choose to put in my mouth, that I could be shortening my life span. It’s also not easy to pass up brownie Sundays. It’s all hard. I decided I am going to look at the bigger picture on this too. I started thinking about how generally healthy I’ve been my whole life. I’ve always exercised and eaten healthy foods. My staple foods are the problem; eggs, cheese, nut butters, bagel and cream cheese, not brownies. I don’t eat brownies on a regularly. The mind gets real screwy sometimes.

I worked in the studio today for a bit, I drew and did some watercolor, staying monochromatic. I left them as I did them because I thought they were very expressive. Nothing called back at me to change it or to paint over it. We’ll see tomorrow. Sometimes I see my work in a totally different way the next time I look at them.