Creative Play

Heading for possible jury duty today. The creative will be limited to knitting the scarf I have been working on for months! I have never served on a jury. The closest I came was to be questioned for the 13th seat, alternative. But having lived in Synanon, believing in rehab, not in favor of death penalties, loosing two family members to murder, knowing people who died because of drunk drivers, some where along the line I wasn't considered to be objective s0 I have been excused. But I have never been asked to U.S. District Court before so this is a new adventure.

Yesterday in setting up the swamp cooler we found a burned hole in the cover. One more sign of how we lucked out the night of the fire. Those who watered our roof probably put out a fire they didn't even know had started. We heard the insurance company is holding off cleaning up the mess next door until the investigation is complete. Once in a while I can smell the ashes. 

I am reading the book "In My Fathers House," by Mark Arax. When Mark was 15 his father was murdered by two hit men in the bar that was the dad's business. The murder was never solved. Over the years Mark's need to find the murderer's grew until finally he took leave of his reporter job at the LA Times, and moved back to Fresno with wife and two year old child.  Reading the book is interesting, just Mark's story alone, keeps me turning pages. But there is so much that taps into my life experience that I am totally captivated. Many years back when I lived in Badger, Synanon, we took in a bunch of teenage boys from Fresno. The courts sent them to us. These boys were the most damaged children I had ever worked with. I had in the past worked at a home for delinquent teens in San Diego. They were mild compared to this crew.  These boys had no sense of morality. They had almost no emotional affect, except rage which took very little to provoke. I remember daily feeli...

Learning technology is a challenge. The latest is Photoshop and Twitter. The amazing part of the process is how long it takes, how many failures I must experience before that ah-ha moment when I realize how easy the procedure truly is.  Elsah Cort, the organizer of the Three Rivers Artist's Studio Tour, wants the artists to join Twitter. Being that Twitter is the latest rage in communication, or so the NYT's said, she thought it might help us do a little marketing for the upcoming tour March 19, 20, 21, 2010. So far a handful of the artists have jumped on board. How it will play out is hard to tell. But for me, it has pushed using this blog since there is a way to link from Twitter to here.  I had started with Facebook since a few friends included me, and especially when I realized our daughter Delia using it, I jumped at the chance. Uploading images is easy and the way Facebook is organized captured me. Twitter, 140 words an entry, whereas Facebook you can write more. But Twit...

For years, I have awakened before dawn to write. I scratch black ink on white paper with a special fountain pen. The only rule, keep pen moving. In a half dream state I write, starting with the mundane of yesterday. Layers unfold. I find my own mind. I started this after 20 years of living in Synanon, as a wife, to living alone in one room. It was an avenue to explore where I had been, where I was now, and what kind of future to design. It served me well.  Change is in the wind. I am now an artist. I work in clay, creating masks. Not sure why I obsess with faces, but I don't question, just make them. I do less writing than I used to. The first draft of the memoir has been waiting to be attended to. Does it need a rewrite or is it ready to be sent out? I do not know. But it calls me. And the Ink Quilts, an art form I invented, one for every chapter of the memoir, to be completed. They illustrate in collages of images, drawings, and "ink" quilting, instead of cloth and thre...

Last Saturday I was in bed before 9, reading with husband, friend in guest room, her door closed. Bruce turned out his light but I continued to read for a few minutes. Then I turned out the lights. I closed my eyes and for some reason opened them again in the darkened room. The color orange filled the picture frame on the wall opposite. I thought, "Natasha must be doing something with lights?" But her door was closed. Then fear seared through me and I turned to the window behind. The barn was filled with fire. "Bruce and Natasha, up. There is a fire," I yelled. I jumped out of bed and headed to the phone in the living room and called 911. She transferred me to the Fire Dept. I rushed outside to find Bruce and Natasha grabbing hoses to wet down the fence, bushes and the edge of our house. We are about 20 yards from the two story barn, a container, a wooden fence and plants between us. The fire was three stories high, reaching out of the skylights that had burst. Expl...

We are beginning the process to prepare for the Three Rivers Artist's Studio Tour #9, March of 2010. One of the suggestions is to Twitter, logging your artistic process along the way, thought to be another way to market our event. So I am in the learning process of how this blog and twitter connects. Will I have time to do both? I write every morning in a journal, scratching black ink on white paper, the old slow, messy way of putting thoughts to paper, searching to find my own mind on the life that unfolds each day, pen in hand, moving constantly the only rule. I cannot imagine a day without this pleasure. The brain and hand keep moving across the page, pulling out the mundane to find the important below it. When I take the writing to the computer, typing on a keyboard, it is different. It is work. It is editing to make it perfect, something others will see.