#uncoffeed...

Last year was a crazy-productive one for me and also one of my all-time lows. I found inspiration in the words of Peter Kidd when he sent them to me priority mail .  "See what happens," he said.  A lot happened. And I kept going. I started a series of sunflower paintings , and started a series of crows. I mailed art to an exhibit at Woman Made Gallery (both the exhibit and mailing art were firsts for me) and had a solo exhibit at Beanetics Coffee Roasters near my home-base . At the same time as all this awesomeness, and perhaps exacerbated by it, I smashed head-on into a couple of my strongest demons - accepting too much workload from others and bullying - and gained assistance from my doctor instead of self-medicating. We put me on SSRIs for a few months. "See what happens," she said, not verbatim. I stopped taking the meds when my bloodwork showed stress on my liver, and I've kept working. I compiled two chapbooks of poetry and submitt...

Here's the secret to my productivity:  almost every blog post starts as an email to someone who is kind enough to tolerate my wordvomit.  I love you guys. Sometimes my emails spill over from one Venn circle to the next, and I wind up filtering ideas through friends who don't know each other. The following wisdom was spawned thus: "...I wrote it because I felt like I shouldn't, and so I stuck with it until it honestly felt constructive. " - Jim McCormick I feel like I should tattoo this on my thigh, though I probably will opt for a raven instead. You know that nagging from between your ears; I know you do.  That moment of hesitation when you aren't really sure if you're on track, whether your thought is being translated clearly from subconscious to masterpiece.  You aren't sure if you're gonna piss somebody off. Forget about that last one. Completely disregard it.  Repeat after me:  someone else's piss is not your problem . Whe...

Man, what a day for etymology. I really liked this one - thanks, Linda  and Paul. If you have read more than two of my posts, you know that #equality is a huge topic for me. I was raised by my momma to know that all people are equal in value. We have a baseline of not-despicable and our worth is what we make it from there. Let me go off on a tangent before addressing the connotations of words. It's likely that I feel strongly about #equality because I was taught to accept each person as a person, and then I went to kindergarten. Kindergartners can be horrible people. I was mocked for my clothes, for not being able to read, for speaking my mind. I quickly learned how to read, because I could control that. I couldn't choose my own clothes and I couldn't shut up. Still can't. My bestie in Kindergarten came from a Baptist family, and my parents were Catholic. This meant that on any weekend I could go to church up to 5 times, depending how we chose to arrange our...

I just found out someone I know is amazing. It's so great when that happens, and you should give people more opportunity to show you what they've got. Try to grasp what they are presenting, rather than looking to find something they offer that's already in a language you understand. We hide ourselves because society is quick to throw rocks at anything they don't understand. Quick to try and put the Other outside  the wall. This is a defence on the part of people who don't get you, and everyone has mechanisms, but you know what? You are not responsible for their defences. You need to worry about your own. Let those defences work for you, not against you. Don't try to do everything at once. You will quickly discover that you can't. My World History teacher noticed, in what should have been my senior year of high school, that I was not taking notes but copying a black-and-white photo out of the textbook. Other than the graphite being too shiny in the d...

Today my grandson didn't want to go to school.  He's 4 years old. I was also 4, maybe 5, when I first didn't want to go to school; when I wanted to stay home and keep my life the way it was. I didn't want to hatch out of the egg. My parents, like my daughter probably did with my grandson, cracked that sucker for me and dumped me out. Get dressed, to go work - this is what the rest of your life is going to look like. Start getting used to it now, kid. Half a century later, I am still scarred by the bullying that started in kindergarten.  Back then the  idea that a child might not be emotionally ready to socialise was newly-formed.  The idea that parents needed affordable day-care, though, is old as time.  My mom was fully prepared by her public education to be a top-notch housewife and then she gave birth to imperfect children (we all do, no matter how perfect we want our children to be.) Maybe she should have kept me home another year, and sent me to school w...