My second cup of coffee tastes good today, my cheese sandwich. Outside, pure gloom. Looks just like a foggy day, but it’s pure smoke. I feel myself slipping into this paranoid space. But most of all I find myself in total reality, everything is crystal clear, Smokey clear. This is what Smokey the bear was trying to stop. But we don’t control the Earth. We can hardly control ourselves. I can’t control myself from throwing everything to the side, laundry, cooking, grocery shopping, cleaning my closet, working on my website, working on business stuff for the show and the book, taking a shower, sweeping the floor, picking up the gazzillions of game pieces and cards off the floor, putting away my shoes, my bra, my sweaty shirt, cleaning the poop on the rim of the toilet, (Jack), oh and studying my sign language and thinking about what to make for dinner. But I gotta get to my studio. NOW. I have four hours left of babysitting time. I gotta express my pent up smokey desire, not in word but in an abyss of color and line.
Tag: painting
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I wake up on a beautiful October morning. Jacks sick, so he stays home from school. I turn on the T.V. for him and bright red Breaking News flashes the screen. I’m used to this, everyday this summer there’s been breaking news of some sort, mostly related to the Trump. Then “pa, pa, pa, pa, pa” I hear rounds, people screaming, 50 DEAD, “oh my god” I say. “What, asks Jack”. A Bad man, A bad thing, that’s why I don’t like guns, that’s why I don’t want you to play with guns. What do I say to my almost four-year-old son? Violence again. When Charlottesville happened, he caught a glimpse of white supremacist violence on the T.V. before I could change the channel. The guys in white are bad, I said. Questioning how I tell my kids about bad guys. Generally speaking, watch out for white men? I started to say it, but stopped myself. All white guys aren’t crazy gun maniac, white supremacist, child molester, racist nut jobs. No, this is not the case. But generally speaking you align yourself with the minorities because together we form a majority. I haven’t come out right and said this of course, but actions speak louder than words, especially when raising children. My sweet, innocent, babies.
My question today is how can anyone be sane today? I was thinking yesterday there probably are a bunch of people who say they didn’t really follow the news when Trump was president, that they don’t know anything about what happened in Puerto Rico. There will be those who just don’t pay attention. Sometimes out of necessity, because of a faintness of heart. Some out of oblivion, or they simply don’t care. But the rest of us who have been paying attention, how can we not be on anti-depressants? So much violence in the world, so much devastation. It definitely causes anxiety. I feel anxious right now. The sound of the gun shots ring through my mind. I want to call MSNBC right now and ask them what good it does to play the recordings of gun shots being fired through a high-rise hotel window onto people enjoying a concert. Kids watch this stuff, it’s just not good. Don’t play the real repeatedly. Something SO VIOLENT. There’s so much violence. I don’t want my kids to play with guns or watch violent cartoons. We live in a culture of violence.
I gotta wash these dishes, but I can’t focus on a mundane task because I’m so anxious. I want to go to my studio and paint. But I have two kids here that can’t be trusted alone upstairs with a cupboard and a fridge full of fresh groceries! They are watching Peppa Pig right now, maybe I could sneak down and draw for 10 minutes?
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I’m watching Jack and Fiona climb on our new deck lounge chairs pretending they are roller coasters. Jack slips off, bumping his head face first on the deck. He cries, I go out and hold him. He’s tired. I haven’t been giving them a nap regularly lately because I’m trying to get them to go to sleep earlier. It doesn’t always work, and it requires a massive amount of patience on my part. Fiona and I sat at PEETS coffee this morning at a two sweater. We had a battle of why and why not. Then we walked through the mall to exchange a skirt at H&M I bought without trying on, it’s too small for me. We go up the escalator. I’m holding Fiona’s Hot Coco, that’s cold now, but she still wants it, her half pack of Madeline’s, and a piece of cheese in one hand. I’m holding the bag with the skirt in the other hand. I can’t hold onto Fiona’s hand on the escalator. I get scared she’s going to get hurt, but I feel helpless, my hands are full. “Be careful Fiona” I say. I tell her she can pick out her own wardrobe, since she’s grown so much and has very particular tastes. I spend way more money than I plan, even with the exchange, but Fiona’s style is cool and quite cohesive. Some of the pieces are still a bit large for her, the shoulders slide down exposing her whole chest. It seems she gets a satisfaction out of lifting the strap back over her shoulder. She changes outside the store, puts on her new stockings and too big dress. She puts on her size too big white sparkly princess flats. I go to another store, Crazy 8, to buy her a pair of thick socks so her flats don’t fall off. Later, I make some time in my studio; I put on a Wiggles DVD. I love what I make, the colors, the charcoal drawing on them. I had to work in my studio today, I had to be creative. I paint as fast as I can. I also edited one of my pieces for my book. As I read the piece as my now self, which was my future self when I was writing the piece, I was struck by some of the things I thought that turned out a completely different than I thought they would. I wrote how I thought Billy would be dead by the time Jack and Fiona were old enough to help take care of her. But they are helping take care of Billy already. Billy is still alive and well. Or how I thought the park by my house was yucky, was too dirty for babies, but now I love it, it’s beautiful and fun. How do I read things I thought one way then and think a different way now? To keep the integrity of the piece I need to have restraint and not change too much because of the way my now self thinks. I have many questions about the layout of my book. It is a very creative and tedious process. It’s different than I thought it would be.
Dirty Laundry Blog by Jennifer Hynes 