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The Roses

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Deep Down Trauma Hounds. From the self portrait series on trauma that I’ve never finished. It’s been a hard week and I’m feeling a bit flayed from it-life is in one of those seasons where everything becomes absurd and each way I turn I run into a wall, combined with being so busy that I can’t catch my breath. Today is the anniversary of my dad’s death which always causes old wounds to surface to be dealt with, as they need to be. Anyway I came across this quote from Henry Miller this morning: “Life moves on, whether we act as cowards or heroes. Life has no other discipline to impose, if we would but realize it, than to accept life unquestioningly. Everything we shut our eyes to, everything we run away from, everything we deny, denigrate or despise, serves to defeat us in the end. What seems nasty, painful, evil, can become a source of beauty, joy, and strength, if faced with an open mind. Every moment is a golden one for him who has the vision to recognize it as such” ~Henry Miller

Leaning. Leaning. Leaning.

And it’s time to restart the Gil Elvgren project. Last year the goal was to try and semi recreate 30 of his paintings-i think I managed 5 😂 But its a great way for me to work through this winter ennui and makes a pressing reason for me to exercise. 😒 As a reminder of the actual work at hand: “This being human is a guest house. Every morning is a new arrival. A joy, a depression, a meanness, some momentary awareness comes as an unexpected visitor...Welcome and entertain them all. Treat each guest honorably. The dark thought, the shame, the malice, meet them at the door laughing, and invite them in. Be grateful for whoever comes, because each has been sent as a guide from beyond.” Mawlana Jalal-al-Din Rumi

This week, years ago was the last I spent with my father. Getting him to agree to go to the hospital for tests was a near impossible task, but eventually he agreed and they kept him for a week. I went to visit him daily at the VA and one day he said "I have cancer. It's incurable, but they offered treatment to prolong my life. I said no" I asked "what do we do now"? He replied "We go home". I quit the business I was building and spent every day of his last 6 weeks with him. He had me read books out loud while he laid in his bed. He had conversations about things we had never talked about. Like the night, when I was 7, my mother had a breakdown and took a sledgehammer to the glass windows of our porch, before she left our lives for several years. I told him how I remembered watching her do that and wanting to run out and stop her but my sister dragged me up stairs. For years after I thought that the glass shards in the Ivy bed were from the Dozers of Fraggle Rock as that was a better story than my mother in awesome fierceness bashing the windows out. He confided that when she left she was homeless. He gave her money for food and gave her a car so she wouldn't have to live on the street. He said he married her because he loved her, and always would, but marriage to her was not going to work. He was 50 when I was born, living with MS and seven years later a wife that lost her mind to addiction and left him. He had grown up in wealth, then married in college, divorced and married again, then divorced with a 7 year old girl to care for. He tried. Soon after the divorce he was laid off. He tried extolling the virtues of government cheese. I didn't care, I ate it because I was hungry and the bread we had was moldy. Food pantries were a social event. For holidays we went to community meals or church gatherings. Sometimes we took my Grandmother Fox, my maternal grandmother, as she and my dad were close. One year he took me to Sea World. I was 9. He gave me a map and some money, made sure my watch was set to his and told me what time to meet him at the bench he'd be waiting on...(continues in comments as it’s too long)

Perception.

Daisy Sprocket.

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