Would you guess

About six years ago my cousin and I had a conversation where my sister's name came up and my cousin responded in a very flippant way. I called her on her statement and then I told my sister about it because it annoyed me and I felt that she needed to know. Decades before, we had agreed that we would always be true to each other about anything that upset us about the other. In our family, we were the children of the most successful couple. To us, everyone else seemed to be successful as well. No one was lacking for anything. However, the other siblings and spouses would talk about our parents for sport. We grew up aware of the challenge and the duplicity. It was particularly upsetting to my sister and I because all of the siblings would act one way behind our parents back and another to their face. Thus the decision to never be that way with each other as we grew to adulthood. My cousin recently reached out to me to do some freelance work for her and I accepted. Last night my mother decided to discuss my project with my sister. The next thing you know, my sister is calling me and shouting on the phone and all up in her feelings about our cousin. She even calls me disloyal to take up a job with her. Waw! I listened, I stayed calm, I apologised to my sister. I confronted the word disloyal and then promised to discuss the whole kettle of fish (lol) with our cousin after I complete the job. This morning, now that a few hours has passed between the conversation and my contacting our cousin again, I am here writing about it. Listening to my sister, I hear her emotions stirring up in the most irrational way. But I can only write that here. She is feeling genuinely hurt. The story she is telling is one of wanting whatever construct she has designed to go as she wants it to go. So this means, I factor in her narrative in a certain way and so does our cousin. My seeing it from the outside gives me a certain vantage point. When I am in situations, I too of course am holding to my beliefs completely teeth clenching, white knuckling the matter. Thus I am really trying to put myself in her position to understand where all of the emotions are coming from. Yet, in so doing, I also see what she is not saying. I dealt with this last year with my friend who has called me a bitch since my father has died. Who knew that everyone is so tightly wound up? Perhaps I am also equally sensitive? Today, the needs people have to have their emotions attended to has left me a bit staggered. I question what it all means? How much of it is delusion and how much a simple response to who we are as human beings?

A good tired

I have been burning my candle at both ends and in the middle. But the results are good. However, I am going to take some time to have a proper rest after I complete the bulk of the things that I am doing now. I exercise in the morning and today I waited for a lady I met yesterday who looked at my weights and mentioned that she needs a pair but has lost her job. I offered her a pair that I have. The mornings are moments when I can have some me time. But after not walking for almost a year, I am still trying to find a new routine for myself. What I was doing before has changed. I am fortunate that there are many choices for walking. I was out today, and despite covid-19, people are bustling about, all masked. My eyes settled on one or two vendors as the bus I took stopped to let off passengers. One young man was especially admirable as hehad a very neat cart with a huge canvas umbrella. From my vntage point I saw that he had a folding chair under his neat table. He was selling three types of cut up fruit, also preserved mango. If I were stopping off at that location I would have given him a sale. There was also a man selling DVD's. I thought that that was definitely a think of the past. They all looked like washed out photography from my perspective. What a windy day it was today. There is a combination of quiet and selective sounds in our covid world. The teenagers you see on the road in their uniforms no longer congregate in boisterous bunches. Taxi drivers line up to get your attention and pull off with three people and not the usual four. I notice that more and more vendors are selling a variety of fruit, and vegetables. The prices are also good. A store I used to buy tee-shirts and soft shorts from has been replaced by a licore store. That was unexpected. Some large banks have closed extra branches, and people wait outside main ones, socially distanced. The groceries are doing a brisk trade. We hear the sound of one plane from time to time, such a surprise to the system that it is marked in ones thoughts as having happened. Someone is building a house in the mountain nearby, and watching the red soil is a shock, as it is easy to believe that life as we know it has changed so much that such things are just not happening. Yet, today I saw new cars on the road. It is such irony to be living is such contrasts as the world says one thing, gevernment says another and life is as always, doing what it does.

Hello to that one person

This blog is private. But when I set it up I realized that someone would see it. So today, on this rainy afternoon I want to tell you hello. Do not reply. There is no need. To me you are a lovely ladybug who lands on my page and acknowledges that my leaves are green. Thank you for keeping me company with your presence. I hope that I provide some thoughtfulness, humor when necessary and a touch of curiosity. Yesterday I posted some of my workingprocess that was meant for my other blog. I am excited about it. Then the Curator's assistant called me and told me that the work has to be ready NOT for the time I thought, which was three weeks from today. It is due next week!!!! OMG!!! Lord!!! I am going to haul ass and take noght and day. But this is what brings me such joy, so so it is. Coffee,knitted socks, a pillow under my bum and lots of music to take the day and night and have everything add up.

Duality

I am working on two shows at the same time and this one is called DUALITY. I have chosen to do something large and audacious because it is a group show and I have the rare opportunity to create something that I want to see and definetly not something that people expect of me. I have decided to look at male fragility. Actually it is for a solo show that I want to do about that topic. This work is a large quilt that I then place very fine threads onto that form words and in some instances I may consider sentances.

So this is one of the words that I shall be placing onto the quilt. I want the viewer to be able to come up to the work and not see the words at first. Or to zoom in to one or two words and then the longer they stand in fromt of the work, the more they begin to see more.

This will be the biggest work that I have done to date and I plan to do more. In fact I am thinking that I would really like to attempt using paint and full on embroidery on quilts for the solo show. But for this one, the gallery space is very typical of the modern ones you see in New York, all glass and white walls. So as I have written before, the viewer will enter the space and the piece will be filling up a large area. A large soft rectangle...completely the opposite of the work for the other show. I really hope to be able to pull off something that looks discrete and behaves like a slow burn. You look at it and believe it to be abstract in nature and then you begin to see the words form in front of you. The plan is to just make words and choose the best of them. Then see whether I can stitch them into and onto the quilt, sometimes dangle them as well. The quilt has our name and address on the back of it, so I will have to paint on it anyway. Initially I was going to make it two sided, but it will be equally strong hung as I intend it to be as well. I have a few weeks to complete it. So I shall document it in the coming weeks ahead.

These are some images that I did in 2000 for covid-19. I sent it out to a call for works foe covid-19 but they got rejected. The letter written to this call out that asked you to pay US$15 was both hilarious and bruising to the ego. A reminder that there is always a criteria when it comes to Art and that you can never know what people want, you just have to do the work.

There is a drive that I have every day now to get certain things done. About ten to fifteen years ago, probably longer, I finally saw how a small movement could start the literal ball rolling. I decided to sell a product along the lines of Amway. This sort of thing is absolutely unappealing to me. But I chose to do it because I was not working at the time and decided instinctively that I would do it because acting would get me into circulation. Lo and behold, it helped me get on with it. Later, with my partner, we would infuse our work with one and two point type affirmations of what we expected for the work and our futures. I have not done that since he died ten years ago and now I am doing it again, but I am not writing it into the work but into my thinking. It has been hard. I miss my closest friend every day. But together we did so much, and those memorie cannot be taken from me.

Limping from one thing to another, doing a balancing act with sharp objects wearing a clown suit and shoes is how I was feeling. As always, concerns such as mine are hedged in a sameness that has taken hold of me post divorce. But I don't want to observe that right now. I want to focus on something that I find helps bring me to that place, mainly disappointment. When I am in that world. I am usually thinking that everything is a failure. It may begin from without, but before long I am including my very person into the whole pot. What then becomes a stark contrast for me is thoughts of why can't I have at least one area in my life that is working well? I actually agonize about that. I seem to feel that somehow everyone else has their shit together and I am ...the clown balancing on a rope for laughs. This is all about childhood and coping with whatever made me sad back then. it reaks of the bullying faced at school and the sense of being different. Seeing that now, I can bring the necessary strength to put my arms around myself and know that it does not reflect who I am in the least. It is not getting something I need to feel that things are in order...ala....the bill I had to default on...even the word...de...fault....MY FAULT! I am saying that money will make everything better. I equate happiness and success with it. Money will bring comfort, security and love....lack of it is somehow the absence of all of the above? not absolutely...yet, it becomes that so easily. A bright light is also cast on those words...something must be going right....somewhere I must find pleasure amidst all of this artificial. superficial pain? Is it surface pain? Or is it that it is brought to the fore from within? Indeed. So there is the other layer.There it is....a sense of unworthiness because I haven't managed to achieve some sort of standard that everyone else has. I don't have all of the symbols in place that stamps me as successful, I think to myself. What are these things? Ability to make everyone happy with me because i can provide and satisfy. I can think of all of my concerns that cause me so much challenge and know that they shall be handled in good time because I have the resources to do so. I can use money to stabalize what is happening around me. It can be my shield while I wait for the other things that I want to have happen, actually happen. It would certainly make things easier. This war with myself is a HELL of a thing.

it comes in two's and three's

So here I go with my analysis...the death of my dad has placed us in a stark position of sorts. Things that my mother used to do without any consideration before, she now has to take stock. I am aware of the fact that I do a great deal of aesoteric stuff that sometimes cannot pay for anything substantial after my own concerns, and I feel nothing but dread about it all. feeling that way is a waste of time. The answer to me is simply to apply myself to things that will bring in the financial supports. I am presently working on two such things. Yet, I defaulted on a payment for the month and another payment specific to me, I had to curtail. When things like this happens, and I am juggling things, I always feel like a failure. I know that I am not alone in mystruggles. But still....they are my issues and I even feel embarressed to write them here. I find that I should not have these issues a t all. On paper I read very, very well. I have found in the last few weeks, so much support for what I do. However, when one cannot pay a bill via platitiudes, I wonder what is all the adulation amounting to? There is a famous man in my country whom I have always seen as exceptional. he is self made. A force of nature. I used to ask mysekf the question of whether one had to have a gimmick in their career to succeed? Now I understand that if history books shall give me a little footnote, I have lived enough to be a character within its pages. So much has happened to make me colourful, so that concern I had is moot. His drama did indeed help propel his value into the stratusphere. I now ask myself. what do I need to be doing to follow along the same path? Guarantees are a thing that I have always looked towards. I need stability. Last night I felt off balanced by my emotions. I can write forever, and be comforted by it all. But again, until there is the opportunity to really set myself aright, I shall continue to be plagued with concerns like I had.

Depths of dispair

What a night I had. Tempted to write it all down, I decided to behave like a scientist and observe it instead. All day I had a sense of dread, thinking of my dad and the huge vacuum he has left. From there it just got infinately worse. I literally cherry picked my way through my personal shop of horrors. What was goo though is that I am so used to that deep forest that I could see every macabre detail as something to observe and not necessarily allow to engulf me. But it was not easy at all. I just let the things wash over me, conscious that I was wearing my Macintoch of comfort, saying to myself that this too shall pass. It was as I stated, sort of funny in a way. I just went down the line of discomofrts and sense of hopelessness. I confronted future deaths of those I love, whom I depend on and who depend on me. Then, when I was really far into it, my mother complained of a discomfort of her own and rocked me from one fear and dispair to a 'real' one. She turned out to be alright, but that was a huge wake-up call. Amidst it all, I considered giving up what I presently do.I have lots of things to occupy my mind and my hands. But, no immediate fnancial supports and that was what also brought on the sense of dread. You can have every intention in the world, but there are certain things that just do not get done wihout the money to do them. That concern lubricates every shadow and creepy crawly in that forest of pain and anxiety, and it came for me swiftly as I lurched down the garden path. As I always say, a nights sleep provided the necessary balm to bring me back to myself. But also, knowing me, I shall analyze the crap out of what I went through.