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February 2004
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April 2004

Over the weekend, I went through five years’ worth of journals, looking for art to scan in for this blog. I was getting frustrated by the quality of what I was seeing. Nothing jumped out at me. All the sketches were crude, the colors garish, and the subject matter boring. Nothing sang to me, or was “blog-worthy”. I kept pulling all the journals off the shelf, looking through more and more, and precariously piling them up on top of my printer. As I reached for the last one on the shelf, the whole pile shifted and about fifteen journals went flying onto the floor. They landed in a jumbled pile of bruised spines and pages akimbo (I love that word).

I surveyed the mess and realized that it was an impressive amount of journals for someone who regularly beats herself up for being a dilettante in art and writing. They are such imperfect works of art, but they are really works of art. No, they are not professional artworks that can be featured in a gallery show or even a book (the standard that most Americans consider “art”). But if your concept of art is the interpretation of life through an artist’s eyes, then my journals, and your journals are works of art.

I am the first in line to buy the latest book about art journals, journal-making, or any related to the paper arts. We’re all blown away by the level of beauty and skill in these books and we drool over them for months on end. But often they end up depressing us, deflating our self-esteem, as we compare our paltry results with the splendid examples that shine on each of the glossy pages of the latest offering.

Fuggedaboutit.

I can look through five years of art journals, and find one or two pages that I’d submit to a publication, and if you’ve been journaling long enough, you can too. What I find in these books are not examples of art journaling, but beautiful examples of art. What’s the difference? A great deal. It’s a big jump to call an elaborate, multi-layered, photo-transferred, embellished, embossed, collaged, waxed image a journal page. I love Teesha Moore and her artwork, but when she published an article about how she creates her journals pages, and it took nine steps before she even picked up a pen and wrote a word, I knew she was out of my league. And I know that her daily journal pages can’t be that “finished”. My daily journal pages are sketchy, jumpy, half-finished, smeared, messy, and often just half-formed thoughts on my way to something else.

I’m on several art journaling lists, and each time a new beautiful book is published, the lists swell with posts from journalers bemoaning their lack of talent, and newcomers all jazzed up but not knowing how to get from their blank page to a Teesha Moore work of art. Over and over I read posts that say “I don’t know what to draw”, “I don’t know what to write about”, “I don’t know how to start”, “why don’t my pages look like the ones in True Colors?”

Fuggedaboutit.

These books are fabulous pieces of inspiration that can get you to get off the couch, turn off the TV and get out your art supplies. At that point, choose one technique you haven’t tried that’s featured in the book, and then put it away on a shelf. I guarantee that if you try to make art with the book open lying next to your colored pencils, you’ll want to impale yourself with your Prismacolor Indigo Blue and the blank page will grow to the size of Moby Dick’s blank forehead. Like Ahab, you’ll be forever chasing that whale and miss all the succulent little fish swimming merrily around you.

So in honor of imperfect art, I’ve posted a “lousy” (my words) sketch I did at a park. The sketch is crude: it has no perspective, it’s out of balance, the pen line is rough, and it has all the marks of a hurried, sketch with no thought to what I was observing, but just a rush to get it all on the page. And so what? When I see it, I’m reminded of a warm morning in November when I spent a quiet morning by myself while my kids were at Sunday school. It was unseasonably warm and I sat on a stone bench on the edge of Long Island Sound and tried to capture the late fall beauty of bare trees, granite rock, and steel blue water. All that may not be visible on the page, but it is visible in my mind’s eye as I remember.

That’s all I hope for when I journal. If I have the time and energy to do a beautiful drawing or painting, then it makes the journal sing all the more. But if I don’t, I’m still gonna record the day, however hurried or untalented I feel. And at the end of the year, the pages that are the most smudged and messy are often the ones that bring back that the way I felt that day more than any others.

Take a look at this great article about journaling. You’ll never find yourself without a thought as to what to write about or draw if you remember why you are journaling, which is to create a record of your life, not to see how many art techniques you can jam onto a page.


Julia and I have hung out together all weekend. I forget sometimes what a neat kid she is when my only interaction with her during the week is "did you do your homework? take a bath? empty the dishwasher?" inquiries. We went to a skate shop today (3rd time in as many weeks) and to her delight, they finally got in the new skate shoes she wanted. A very gregarious young man waited on us, and while I enjoyed talking to him, I could have lived without Julia listening to the description of the party he had where 300 kids showed up and the police were busting all the teens for drinking. Nothing else to do in my town, he tells me, while we're standing in a giant, upscale mall that has a bowling alley, a ton of food places, and a huge theater complex.

Yesterday two of my sisters and I rounded up 5 kids and my Mom and went to a park on the Sound. We ate sandwiches and the kids played frisbee and ran around. We watched crews from Iona college and Lafayette College in skull races. Fran had a new, beautiful kite and after an hour or so of trying to get it to fly, it was eaten by a large tree, which naturally caused much consternation. Older kids tried to knock it down with a ball, but I'm sad to report it's still there - or not. We had to leave it dangling about 5 stories up in the air. Julia got to be in the background of a news feature as a local station filmed folks out and enjoying the balmy weather. (We've now watched it about ten times.)

I intended to come home and write, but too much fresh air made me very sleepy. I was about out for the night when M. called to tell me Mrs. Miniver was on TV. A bowl of that Mocha Java kept me awake and I cried as I always do at the end when the villagers raise their faces to the sky visible through the bombed out church and defiantly sing their hymn against Nazism and for Mother England.

If only politics were so black and white today.

It's time for my husband to come home. I'm tired of playing alone.


Blessed, blessed weekend. Saturday quiet. Grey and foggy outside, everyone is sleeping past nine o'clock and the day ahead is free. Stay in or go out? I'll let the day unfold and bring me where it wants.

Stan took Chris to a college open house for the weekend. The youngest is asleep upstairs with her two cousins, big sleepover morning after. One of my sisters spent the night and we all read and hung out in front of the fire last night. Java chocolate chip ice cream played a significant role in the festivities.

The beautiful fabric bought last weekend is waiting for me to slice it up with the shiny Gingher shears. I could surprise Stan and run to Home Depot, buy a light green paint and paint our bedroom. Julia needs an Easter outfit and we could go to Old Navy. I think a trip to Trader Joe's is on the list.

Or maybe I'll just write and finish the collages I started. Go to Borders, drink a latte and read magazines. We have pizza dough to make - Julia likes rosemary, salt, and olive oil. I like caramelized onions and kosher salt.

I am luxuriating in nothingness.


Thank you to all who wrote in and offered their peace to Kathleen. In thinking about her intensely over the past few days, I remembered that when I first learned she was in our group, I almost didn't join. The group was tiny, only six women. Kathleen seemed so aristocratic and to be very frank, old, that I couldn't imagine what we would have in common to share in terms of our spirituality. Another woman in the group was at the other end of middle age. She was also the wife of a deacon and a leader in our church. I thought she would be stuffy and very conservative. However would I fit into this group and why would I want to? Marjorie turned out to be the first person to knock the stuffing out of sacred cows. She had a sly, dark humor and flashing eyes that were punctuated by her Boston accent. We quickly became friends, bonded by humor and our ex-Northeast status. .

The image I have of my conscious self is that of a very liberal, open, and accepting person. I'd be the first person to tell you that appearances don't matter. But when I think back to the unlikely friendships I've made over the years, most of them started by being thrown together with someone whom I never would have picked as friend, and worse, someone who made my eyes roll back in my head.

Pat was the leader of our little group and over the five years we lived in Memphis, she became my closest friend. When I first met her, she was in charge of the church's Women's Retreat. I was lonely, so lonely for community. I missed my sisters with a hurt so deep it was like a scar on my heart. Pat was very lively, with vivid red hair and booming laugh. She knew everyone in the church and buzzed around in her minivan from house to house, church to church, bringing food, giving rides, organizing everything. She was Church Mom to every sick, disabled, wallflower in the church. So naturally I resented her interest in me! Pat insisted on picking me up and taking me to the retreat and I remember gettting in her minivan filled with supplies for the retreat, kids school books and sports equipment, and a large amount of dog hair, and thinking, what the hell was I doing.

Pat was like a top, once she was wound up, it was impossible to get her attention. She had a ditzy quality that made her perpetually late, overly generous, and easily put into a turmoil. I didn't understand her personality until we both discovered out interest in art . She was a very gifted artist and had stunning watercolors and collages hanging in her house. She'd only tell you that she'd painted them if you pointedly asked who the artist was. As our friendship grew deeper over lattes and books at our mornings at Borders, I came to understand that Pat had a true artist's personality. When I wanted to kill her when she was late for the 100th time, I forgave her the minute I saw her paint-stained hands and realized that she had lost herself in a beautiful zen-like watercolor state.

Pat dragged me to a tai chi class. We practiced in the mornig around my back yard. Pat would pull in the driveway after we both left kids off at school and let herself through the gate into the yard. I'd see her coffee cup on the picnic table and go outside. We greeted the muggy Mephis morning in our opening pose and then walked heel to toe around the swimming pool, feeling the earth's pull through the soles of our feet, raising our arms to the heavens, gliding past the heady blue of thehydrangeas and the startling crimson of the azaleas. We were yin and yang and good for each other. She made me loosen up and lose the staccato lawyer's mind and I grounded her and made her focus when she became fuzzy with worries and too many commitments.

When I thought I was having an nervous breakdown, and I found myself standing in line at Seesel's, grocery cart in front of me, tears streaming down my face, Pat was the person I called. She brought me home and put me to bed. She called our friend Barbara a reiki healer to come over. When Barbara stood at the foot of my bed and placed her hands over my forehead, the image of Pat's bright red hair flowed out of Barbara's hand and into my mind and and stayed there for the rest of the treatment.

She didn't come to say good bye on the day we moved. I'd been expecting her all day, a knot in my stomach about so many things, and the most about saying good bye to her. She'd been by the day before and helped me pack up my studio. She'd given me a little gift and then left, saying she'd be over tomorrow. She never came. She couldn't. I left with tears streaming down my face for my home, for our lovely life when things were well, and for Pat.

Pat and I were good about keeping up through phone calls and visits after I moved. We even met in Seattle for Artfest, and spent the weekend totally immersed in our passion for art. But time and distance have their way and we've slowed down to cards at birthdays and a call every few months. I haven't made any new friendships since I moved back to New York. I've taken up with old friends, and see my sisters constantly, but I haven't found a spiritual group, or an art group. Who am I overlooking? Who am I turning my back on because they don't "look" arty, interesting, are too dull, too flaky, too loud, too quiet? I will enter the world today with eyes open and hope my soul is touched by a new hand. And I will call Pat.


I am working through a period of dry, dusty faith. I didn’t realize how parched I was until I began reading a book and the writing made me long for a tall, cold glass of spiritual healing. My faith rattles around me like a dried-up seed pod, once fat and fertile and bursting with life, now a hollow, hardened receptacle clinging to a stem.

My spirituality unfolds and flowers in the company of those who practice their faith, seeking answers, witnessing wonders, practicing the everyday sacred of their gentle lives. I think of Kathleen, an elegant, frail, eighty-something woman, who regularly came to our small, faith circle each week. She was a widow and had a troubled relationship with her daughter. After her husband died in mid-life, she went to work, and worked well into her 70’s, retiring on very little income to a simple condominium near our neighborhood.

She reminded me of an ageing Katherine Hepburn, from the way she stylishly piled her hair on top of her head, to her outspokenness at prejudice and discrimination. She had health issues, but kept them to herself. She wouldn’t let us help her as much as we would like, but she accepted any favor given without asking, and she wrote beautiful thank you notes. She was a woman of quiet grace, an old-fashioned grace, that was revealed through her slow Southern accent, through her protestations over attempts to do too much for her, and through her quiet acceptance of her children’s and grandchildren’s problems with very contemporary issues.

One day, as we were making our way through, “When in Doubt, Sing” by Jane Redmont, Kathleen told us of the death of her young son. He was only three years old when he died of an ailment that would be corrected nowadays with some antibiotics. They took him to the hospital and he never came back. We all were silent as we tried to understand the depths of the misery that she had carried in her heart, still, some 60 years later.

Sometimes she would not show up on Tuesday morning, and one of us would call her apartment. She would be feeling ill but not want to bother anyone. She had an ongoing problem with her throat that made her voice shaky and hoarse at times. She was embarrassed by it, and would be very quiet at meetings until we drew her out. We began to notice that her simple, well cut skirts and blouses were getting very loose on her. One member made an excuse to visit her and in nosing around her kitchen found very little in the way of food because her cat had been sick and she had vet bills she couldn’t afford to pay. We all tried to help in unobtrusive ways.

At the heart of this little group, was the connection to our Church, though not all of us were the same religion or went to the same church. But we all had some contact with it, and were able to call on the various ministries to help Kathleen, to have someone look in on her, bring her a meal occasionally, and make sure she got out. When I moved back to New York, she sent me a beautiful letter and a medal that had been in her family for years.

Before I left Memphis, our family went through some very troubled times. Health and money issues plagued us. We felt like the poster child for neediness. I would resist coming to the meetings, feeling that I had not a thing to offer and would only sit in tears and bring everyone down. If I made it to a meeting, Kathleen would make me sit next to her on the sofa. She would hold my hand for awhile, and tell me how beautiful I was. She wouldn’t let me slip away from the group and tethered me there as I worried about her and she worried about me.

Last month, I got an email from one of my friends that Kathleen had died. She had passed away quietly, as would be her way. She had to be close to ninety years old. It saddened me not to be able to be there for her funeral. I imagine that the ladies of the group brought in beautiful flowers with which to adorn the altar and that her favorite music was played. She loved our pastor and I’m sure he officiated at her services. I would have liked to bring her one last bunch of hydrangeas from my garden, tied with a red ribbon of remembrance.

These are the thoughts that sustain me through this spiritual drought. My prayers are papery thin. My time at church is spent with my mind rushing through the obligations to be met that day. Around me sit strangers, acquaintances, fellow pilgrims. There is no one to tether me and I float above the congregation, empty and weightless. I pray for resurrection, I pray for the greeting of middle-aged hands held in mine as we pray for our friends, for a cup of tea placed in my hand, for the lighting of the candles in circle as we all sit in silent prayer, and for the expansion of my heart to encompass all those who are seeking the same connection.


My son graduates high school on June 16th and turns 18 on June 18th. He is the second born child and only son. He is a very busy young man. He works, plays in the school band, has two garage bands, and belongs to a couple of clubs.

Teen age boys are so different from teen age girls. He never bugs me for clothes (or manicures, pedicures, and tanning sessions like his sister). I haven't seen the floor of his room in four years (I think it's hardwood.) Our conversations are always on the fly. (Where are you going? Band practice. On a Friday night? Not school band, band band. Band band? With my friends. Where? At Kevin's. Kevin's in your band? He's in my other band. You have another band? Ye-ee-s-s-s.)

Okay. He is, as they say, "a good boy" ( no visible signs of trouble and good grades.) He's usually respectful (except when he's tired, stressed, annoyed, or doesn't want to: clean his room, do his laundry, mow the lawn).

But I can't think of the last time he sat on my bed at night and watched TV with us or talked. His older sister knows the name of the girl he is interested in months before I do. We don't know the last names of most of his friends. He has his own car and doesn't need us to ferry him to friends' houses anymore. His father calls him "the Mystery Man". Suddenly I am the mother at home tracking him down through phone calls. I am the mother saying, "are you coming home for dinner?" Next year when he goes off to college, the struggle will be even greater to find out what's going on his life.

So the other night when I was exhausted, and cleaning up after dinner was his job, I stayed and helped. He'd just gotten into the college of his choice and he was in an expansive mood. We talked about his college choices, then about who plays in each of his bands. As I cleaned the counters and he loaded the dishwasher, we reminisced about Boy Scouts, about the 5 or so different grade schools he attended when we moved cross country twice, and various childhood incidents including when I managed to misdiagnose an illness and the poor kid suffered with symptoms for several weeks before I finally went to the doctor. I still feel guilty about that and said I know I wasn't always a great mother. Suddenly the son became a man. "Come on now, I don't want to hear anything like that!" he said in a reproving tone as he gave me a bear hug.

My husband is an only child and his father left the family when he was in third grade. His mother never remarried and he was depended on for more than the usual mother/son relationship. I come from a family of five girls in a two-parent household and my parents rarely called on us to do more than go to school and work part-time. . Our earliest fights were always about the amount of time and attention his mother demanded.

As my son grows older, I am beginning to understand my mother-in-law's fears. No, I don't have them to the same extent that she does. I am secure in the knowledge that my sons loves me and is developing normally into his own person. I know we gave him roots so he could develope wings. I'm just not so sure I'm ready for the first flight.

I hope he continues to indulge me with rare evenings cleaning the kitchen. I could do it for him, but when else would we spend more than five minutes in a room together?

When he was little, we went to Cape Cod. I have a video of him playing in the water. Suddenly he became aware that I was taping him. He dropped his pail and shovel and came running up the slope to the blanket. He put his face right into the camera and said, "Mommy, I neeeeeed you!"

I hope he still does.


This is the fourth house we've owned since we were married, and the second in New York. It is also the smallest house we've owned, and our conglomeration of twenty-year old furniture, family cast-offs, and garage sale treasures have had to learn to live together in a jumble of smaller rooms.

It's not easy to monitor the peace among conflicting colors and styles that once had their own territories in which to rule. The coral wing chairs were the dowager queens of a huge living room, where they used to flutter like Monarch butterflies on the oriental carpet. The five green and yellow bookcases stood like good soldiers against the solid wall of the family room; now four of them hold their breath lest they be banished upstairs like their brother to a forgotten corner of a kid's room. And the dusty red and green cabbage rose draperies in the dining room, the ones that sport the beautiful fringe, are always in a state of nervous exhaustion from adjusting their hemlines when they catch a view of their sexier living room neighbors, the fringed swags. Which is silly really, when you consider that the fringed swags where just released from their packing case prison in my closet where they were sentenced to three years solitary confinement while the powers that be figured out what to do with the silk plaid renegades who had nothing in common with any window in this house.

Gradually the governing powers have worked out a detente. Chairs and tables have been moved up one flight of stairs and down another so many times that their passports were full. Carpets have been laid that worked a treaty amongst loud, sassing colors, and a blind eye has been turned to the skirmishes of rebel patterns as long as no one gets hurt. Alas, one blue and white checked camel-hump sofa was sacrificed to the dumpster when its fragile glazed cotton shell could not endure the abuse of teens who like to eat ravioli while lying down and watching TV. I had no safe haven to send it to and succumbing to the cries of the masses that its proud stiff profile was never meant for daily use, I sacrificed it so others could live.

As the empress of this rag tag bunch I have lost my love for decorating. It is all too much and too little at the same time. I am ready to give up my fond embrace of yellow, red, and blue, and paint all the rooms a light green, paint all the furniture a distressed white, tear down the drapes and put up bamboo blinds, swathe all the furniture in muslin slipcovers, and have one solitary, exquisite white orchid on the cocktail table as the only adornment. However, unless a cable TV van pulls at my door, money, time, and energy will never be allocated to the transformation.

Oh, I used to have a love affair with decorating. I slipcovered, hemmed, stapled, painted, wallpapered, and faux finished with the best of them. I thrived in the South where discount fabric houses and estate sales were lined the roads like McDonalds do here. I was never happier than when standing on someone's cold front lawn at 7:00 a.m., the dew soaking my sneakers, and haggling for a set of wicker furniture for the price of a haircut. And the once-a-year sale at Johnson Brothers Fabrics would have my heart racing for a month before as my friends and I reconnoitered daily to review time, place, and who was driving.

The return to New York was like a sledgehammer to my English Country House fantasy. I gave up wandering through fabric stores and swore off garage sales since I had not a table left on which to put another objet d'art. Working full time leaves little inclination to pull out a sewing machine or a paint brush (unless it's to collage or watercolor).

But something was in the air yesterday, a mixture of light and a promise of warmth that stirred my fabric-starved soul. I walked around the house and made a list of threadbare furniture and bare windows, and with my sister Maria and my nephew Nicholas (victim to no babysitter), spent the afternoon zooming from one side of the county to the next, looking for fabric bargains.

The first stop was a crowded store that sold mainly dressmaking and quilting fabric. Its "home dec" section was pretty sad. The second stop turned out to be a hobby place with five bolts of ugly synthetic blends. Finally, we gave in and went to the motherlode, the place we'd been resisting because their prices were as grand as their selection.

But - what were those red tags hanging from all the bolts?? They were having their yearly SALE! Pulse quickening, heart pumping, I inhaled the smell of sizing. My eyes glazed over at the chintzes. My feet skipped to the silks. My hands caressed the tapestries. I snipped swatches, measured out yards of piping, and paced between the blues and yellows as I considered my options. It all came back to me and felt my old instincts kick in as I expertly deflected another customer's reach to the bolt I'd been considering, and grabbed a passing salesperson and asked for a cutter. Quickly, I perused the stacks of clearance bolts, bypassing another customer who had the same dreamy wild-eyed look and was hogging the clearance corner. My sister, overwhelmed by my endurance (and worn down by my poor 5 year old nephew who just wanted to go home and ride his bicycle), found a comfy a sofa and began to read a book.

I emerged victorious, clutching a shopping bag full of a plaid that will be the border to the ten yards of flowered fabric that I bought five years ago and never did anything with. It will all make up nicely into hall curtains. And a few yards of a luscious coral chenille will turn into sofa pillows. I resisted the 15 yards of blue broadcloth for a summer slipcover for the sofa and I'm glad I did because when I got home I realized that it would have to be green not blue, and what was I going to cover the coral chairs with and if I did it all, I could bring down the red and white checked chair from the third floor and slipcover it and finally get a curtain for the downstairs hall window and what about something for the French doors, and y'know, I could solve the problem of the cabbage rose dining room disaster if I reworked them into balloon shades and that would ease up the anxiety over yet another print and color for kitchen curtains if we ever paint the kitchen blue and maybe I could shirr some panels to hide the ugly kitchen cabinets.....

Help me, I think I'm falling in lust again . . .


Unfurling Your Flag

Last night we went to my son's Pops Concert at the high school. The music program at our large, public high school is first rate and we've come to expect extraordinary performances and we were not disappointed. All the bands and orchestras were great, but the highlight of the evening was a group of five young men, "The Enchanters", who sang doo wop and got the crowd on their feet. Their big number was "Just My Imagination", which happens to be a favorite song of my husband, popular when he was in college. So there we were, sitting in the auditorium of the school from which we both graduated, listening to themusic that we danced to, made out to, and listened to on his 8 track tape deck for hours as we drove around in his VW.

Boy did I feel old.

Last year, the school was featured in an MTV show where they helped kids fulfilled their dreams. They picked a big, burly football player who had always dreamed of singing opera. MTV arranged for him to have private lessons with an impresario and he spent a semester studying and juggling the lessons with his grueling football schedule. He debuted at the Christmas concert and his selection was O Sole Mio, not his mentor's choice. They had fought over this selection, the mentor wanting him to sing an Irish aria that was much kinder to a young, new voice, but this young man wanted to sing O Sole Mio, the symbol to him of the peak of Italian opera.

Imagine, if you can, being 17 years old football player, wearing a tuxedo for the first time in your life, and coming out on a stage, lit by a spotlight, to sing an aria in Italian, while a cameraman from MTV filmed you about six inches from your face. When he came out on stage, wild applause erupted , but in the seconds before he began to sing, there was absolute silence. In those few seconds he stood on the precipice of fantasy and his future was the great divide.

I'd like to tell you that he was the next Placido Domingo, and that he got a music scholarship, gave up football, and is in Turin studying. But the quality of his performance simply didn't matter. By the end of his piece, everyone in that audience was standing and cheering; his mother was crying, his girlfriend was crying, I was crying. It was an extraordinary privilege to be witness to the living of a dream, and to see courage personified.

I don't know enough about this kid to understand what nurtured such a fantasy, so foreign to his sports/macho/blue collar background. But I wonder what formed this yearning. Did he have a grandpa who listened to arias on scratchy records while he babysat? Did his mother hum arias while she mopped the floor and sliced carrots for the salad? Did he have a neighbor who left windows open on a hot summer night, the sound of an Italian tenor spilling out into the velvet darkness?

We never know all those we touch in our wake. Nurture the dreams of those around you by proudly wearing your heart on your sleeve. Frame and hang your paintings. Carry your journals and pens and sit in the open and sketch. Give copies of your poems as gifts. Invite everyone you know to see the local production you are in.

Play your piano with the windows open.


We had two weeks of spring-like weather when the kids dragged out their dusty bikes, skateboards, and basketballs and stayed outside until desk fell at 6:00. We raked the leaves that had burrowed into the corners of the house through the winter, and we drove past the plant nursery up the street, excited that they had put the first bushes out for sale. I foraged through my closet and found my rose silk suit jacket and wore it to court as a burst of spring color.

It has snowed for three days.

The big snow came Tuesday and we've had "snow showers" constantly since then. A bigger storm is expected tonight with another 6 to 8 inches. Everything is white outside again and it is a wet, heavy snow that has articulated all the branches, shrubs, and trees. It looks like Fargo.

My friend Ellie writes of tan lines in California. I would hate her but she's too nice.

So I have to grab something today and wring some color out of it. The vast, white landscape is my Moby Dick and I'm determined to conquer it. I think the Conte Aquarelle crayons in their neat, flat tin are a good start. They are lined up in their rainbow palettte, a bit grubby, some sticking together because I like to wet a brush and run it along the tops of them. It's the lazy woman's way to mix up blues and green, yellows and orange, pinks and red.

I wish I hadn't worn my rose jacket on Monday.


I was looking through my journals last night. It was a good night for it, as the snow storm raged outside and we comforted ourselves with my sister's potato leek soup and an Irish soda bread that I'd picked up at a little bakery.

It cracked me up to see how many sketches I'd done of breakfasts at diners. There's an awful lot of mugs, plates of eggs, and sugar bowls in my journal pages. I guess it's one of the few times I can sit down and eat without being tired from preparing the food and generally speaking, we don't encourage activities at the dinner table besides eating and talking (picture husband with nose in sport pages, mom drawing, and kids beeping away with game boys). So breakfast remains the most-drawn meal in this household.

What are you having for breakfast this morning? We're not a breakfast family except on weekends. Nobody has breakfast, except maybe a bowl of cereal on the fly. Today I am thinking about the Irish soda bread, but my rule is never eat before court, so I'll have to cut a slice and stick it in a baggie. If I don't manage to leave it on my counter, I'll have it at the office as a pre-lunch snack. Never can get enough of those pre-lunch snacks!


I am defiantly posting my Spring collage. We are "bracing" as the stupid weatherpeople say for a big snowstorm. 6 to 12 inches are predicted. I can't imagine it will accumulate on the roads since it was 59 degrees yesterday, but they say half will come down after nightfall and tomorrow morning will be a mess. We'll see. Tomorrow is the St. Patrick's Day parade. I can recall it snowing in years past, but this is ridiculous!

I am working with my creativity coach on dealing with my perfectionist issues. I have not written a serious word in several months. This blog has nicely fed my urge to write and supplanted the little time and/or energy to do serious writing. The coach points out to me that I have the time and energy to write the blog because no outcome is tied into it. In short, I don't expect a book contract when I post. (But hey - if any editors or agents are reading this....)

How many bloggers do you suppose actually hope for some recognition that will open the doors to have books published, columns written, or some form of remuneration and career. It would be nice, no?

Anyway, mindful of my coach's words, I carried the laptop from pillar to post all last evening. First I read all my email, checked all my favorite blogs, straightened up my room. Finally, at ten minutes to ten, I opened a new file and began to write the chapter that's been in my brain for two weeks.

I wrote five sentences, five really bad sentences, before exhaustion hit me.

But now I have the beginning of a first draft. Tonight I'm writing five more sentences. Somehow I'll get going on this. I am super-motivated by the need for more money and the craving for a life not tied to going to the Bronx to court each day until I die. And, I know, that is ALL the wrong reasons to heap on myself. That pressure is what keeps it all stuck in my mind.

Maybe it's time for a phone call to my best friend, I(nner) C(ritic).


I hear of jealousy and flaming occurring on some blogs, but I have experienced nothing but generosity from the blogging community. Check out these three beautiful digital collages created by Picasso Dreams using the journal page I posted entitled "Prayer". These images sing with color and spring. Thanks, Kelly!


Typepad problems

Those of you that are reading this should know that you are one of the few lucky ones who are able to. Tyepad is having problems and many of the pages won't load. I can't see my own site, but others tell me my posts are being posted.

If you can, click over to moleskinerie and read "Little Women" where my pic of Julia is posted.


I spent Saturday at the Metropolitan Museum with my two daughters and my mother. Nothing makes me feel more grown up than planning a trip to a cultural institution, especially an art museum. Yet, the minute I walk through the doors and pay my admission, I immediately become a kid, wanting to flit everywhere, ravenously hungry, feet aching, thirsty, yet mad I can't see everything all at once.

Feeling like a kid and a very serious adult at the same time, we always begin our trip right before lunch and then go straight to the cafeteria or one of the cafes for sustenance before we even try to take in any serious art viewing. I've learned from experience having many kids in tow than it is pointless to point out the Temple of Dendur when young voices are whining, "did you bring ANYTHING to eat??"

The museum has opened three new "dining opportunities", which is museum-speak for mediocre food at outrageous prices, Our choice yesterday was to have coffee and sandwiches (for the price of a dinner out) at the new cafe in the European Sculpture Garden overlooking Central Park. ( I know other blogs would not be first enthralling you with the dining experience at an art museum, but hey, you're reading mine.)

Try not to choke on the prices, and instead concentrate on the sculptures and artifacts, including several Tiffany windows and an over-the-top tiled fountain, plus and the entire facade of 19th century New York mansion. I even managed to do a sketch of Diana the Hunter while the kids finished up dessert and groaned "she's sketching already?"

One of these days, I'm going to drag the husband into the city on a Friday or Saturday evening to partake in the "happy hour" on the Great Hall Balcony Bar from 4:30 to 8:00 (full bar and live jazz) from 4:30 to 8:00. Probably not. But I'll pretend we did, or save it for a Big Anniversary event then fret the whole time about what I'm going to wear and how fat I am and how we'll never fit in amidst the chic crowd.

After everyone was fed and children dumped $20 worth of food they didn't like into the bins, we took our time browsing through the Medieval Art collection, which seemed appropriate since it is Lent. We love the tiny rooms that are imported wholecloth from European castles and monasteries, such as the Giobbi Studio, an entire room panelled in marquetry trompe l'oiel. It takes the eye awhile to perceive that the beautiful images that make up the paneled room are not paintings, and we had ot resist the urge to trace the tiny pieces of wood with our hands as a guard stood eagle-eyed at the door.

My favorite piece is a small Madonna seated with the infant Jesus on her lap. The sculpture is wooden and crumbling and full of wormholes, but the faces of both mother and child are serene and loving. These Virgin and Child sculptures abounded in the Middle Ages and are known as "Thrones of Wisdom" .(The one linked to is not the one I love, which is much older and fragile.) Mary is considered to be Christ's throne. I think it is a lovely reference to the Feminine Face of God and a symbolic rose to mothers everywhere.

Before we leave the galleries filled with hammered crosses, tiny reliquary boxes, and enameled visages of saints, we always creep into the the little gallery created from the bricked arched area under the stairs of the Great Hall. There you can see the rough-hewed bottoms of the granite risers and the gallery space is just small enough and out of the way for a little shiver as you view ancient tombstones, though it couldn't compare this time with our discovery of a small cross reputed to hold a tooth of Mary Magdalene. We saw the tooth, but couldn't help but wonder if it was removed pre-death or posthumously. Ouch.

From there we wandered into the Arms and Armor
and I sketched the horse and rider pictured above. We intended to browse through all the period rooms in American Decorative Arts, but frankly, it is a stuffy, dimly lit area and a certain young girl kept pestering me "can we go to the paintings, can we go to the paintings?" and I could not stand it a second later.

So we went upstairs "to the paintings" which is how our shorthand for the 19th Century Impressionists. After the tour of the medieval galleries, the impressionists are a leap into light, color, and song. People are no longer on their knees in front of monstrances, nor are they weaving giant tapestries of unicorns. Instead they are out strolling, bathing, dancing, drinking, and are all bathed in the luminous hues of Paris, or so it seems.

The girls immediately go in search of the Monets and leave me to my little novena in front of Madame Georges. (See earlier post on my obsession with this painting.) I did a sketch, which is much better than the one I did two years ago, but not good enough to post, and probably never will be.

If you are not a devotee of Renoir, then I would pay my respects to strong lines and vivid hues of "The Boater", and scurry over to the Van Goghs. Each time I enter the gallery holding his paintings, I am astounded anew with the contemporary color saturation and hue of the works ". The green in "Majolic Jar with Branches of Oleander" , the blue and white in Irises, the yellow background in"L'Arlésienne: Madame Joseph-Michel Ginoux", and the lushness of "Cypresses", a sampling of
just a few of the extraordinarily vivid paintings.

We all agreed that we had two new favorites: Bonnard's Meadow in Bloom, which is oil on canvas but has the lusciousness of pastels, and a Klimt frieze, which I think is called "The Album", but I forgot to write it down and can't find it in google.

When we have enough of romance, we take the stairs down to the bright and bold Modern Art Wing. Suddenly, the canvases grow into room size pieces, the perspectives explode, and the carefully nurtured scenes upstairs are turned on their head with the out-of-kilter paintings of David Hockney, Andy Warhol, Roy Lichtenstein, Ellsworth Kelly, Graham Nickson, Jasper John, Milton Avery, Pollock, and so many more. Pure color and form saturate the walls and we wander through the boldly painted art like time travelers from the Rive Gauche.

The highlight of the day was an exhibition of Chuck Close's work and a display of the process he uses to create his unique portraits. I thought his work was extraordinary, but after viewing the scrim and stenciling process he uses to make his highly-detailed paintings, I think he's a freaking genuis.

So that was our early spring tour of the Met. I'm no Sister Wendy, but I like to visit old favorites and make new discoveries each time we go. Julia has a large sketchbook she's kept for the last four years and it's filled with her museum reproductions. It's something we both share, and that is precious as she grows older and becomes more attuned to sports and cars and music, which is more the bailiwick of her Dad than of me.


As much as I hate dragging myself out of bed on a weekday morning, I love getting up early on the weekend. If I wake up past 8:00, I feel as though I've wasted half the day. Morning is my time to write in my journal, draw, read the newspapers, drink my own coffee, and catch up with my house.In the winter, I make a fire, in the summer, I sit on the porch.

During the week, the house is just a pit stop. In the morning, we're all up and out in the space of one hour. My husband uses the shower, then my son, me next, then the young one. I need 5 minutes for make up, 20 minutes to blow dry my hair, and five minutes of staring into my closet to find something I haven't worn a thousand times already. Then it's a shout out to the kid to get in the car, a run through the kitchen to grab an apple and a yogurt, and we're off.

At night I throw a fast dinner together, and after we eat I head upstairs. By Friday night, I haven't been in my living room for more than ten minutes all week.

Last night I was going to go out for coffee with my sister, Maria. As I threw off my work clothes, I looked longingly at my sweats. A quick call and we changed coffee to my house. I lit the fire, made a batch of brownies and gingerbread cake, and she arrived with milk since I was out. We watched "Yours, Mine, and Ours" with Lucille Ball and Henry Fonda, and she made a collage out of "pink" in her journal, and I drew. I had the leisure to look around my living room and admire the drapes I finally hung and the new candles I'd bought.

Home. Coffee. Art-making. A fire. Oh, that's what this house is for.


I am a cradle Catholic, product of 9 years of Catholic school (tuition got too high in 10th grade and my parents sent me to public school, wrenching me from a school where I was class representative to the Student Senate, to a school where I was a timid, quiet girl amidst 3000 students, but I digress.) I lapsed into agnosticism in college, and stayed away from all organized religion until I had children, and then I reentered the fold.

In Memphis, we found a church that was like a family and I became very involved in many ministries there. I took advantage of all the adult faith classes that were offered, and I found a spiritual advisor. My personal prayer life evolved from the standard 3 prayers of childhood into something more reflective and personal.

Being a writer first and foremost, I wanted to keep a prayer journal. I purchased a gorgeous little fiery red and gold tiny handmade journal and began keeping writing my prayers in it and copying in poems and prayers I read and learned from others.

But like all things that I keep separate from the mainstream of my life, the little prayer book fell into disuse. Lately I've been caught up in a set of worries that enter my life several times a year and are predictable as the change of seasons. Each time I think I can work through it on my own. Each time, I fail. I find myself obsseively praying those 3 childhood prayers again, good prayers, solid prayers, but sometimes they become just form over substance, meaningless litanies parroted in my head before bed.

When I feel like my pockets are full or rocks, I need to go return to the habit of writing down my pryaers. Writing takes precedence over art once again. Pen to paper, black ink onto white or red onto blue, or orange onto black, during the act of writing the words I feel the my shoulders loosen, my stomach relax, and usually by the time I finish working through my worries, a feeling of well being has entered my heart. I rarely come away from these sessions without feeling a resolution that heartens me, and just rereading these entries when I face those dark nights of the soul, reassure me that all will be well, all will be well, and all things shall be well.


I have the itch to travel, a wanderlust that assails me each spring when I wonder what life is like anywhere but here, wherever here is at the moment. It's still wintertime where I live, but with strong nuances of a coming lightness. The air is softer and is laden with moisture and dreams.

My friend, Debbie at Connections is going to the Monte Vista Wildlife Refuge to see the migration of 20,000 Sand Hill Cranes. Every since I read Anne Batterson's book about her five weeks on the road, inclding a visit to this refuge to see the cranes, a little tucked-away part of my mind has been mulling over how I can get there. I can't imagine doing a road trip like Batterson, driving alone from New England out to New Mexico, but I surely would do it with my husbnd or a friend.

So I got it into my head to look at VW Campers on line. They're cozy. I envision Stan, Julia, and I snug in our camper, sleeping side by side in sleeping bags, making coffee each morning on the propane stove, and spending the day in chairs atop the van, watching the migration of thousands of cranes. I can see my books and art supplies neatly stowed in those hanging bags they use on boats, and our maps and binoculars at hand whenever we espy a fork in the road for the taking. My older daughter says that after one trip, I'll never get back in one and be checking into a hotel at the first stop.

Maybe. But right I am dreaming deep about the road less traveled.


Today is the first anniversary of the death of our aunt, Anita Molea. My sister made this collage from the covers of the recipe and cookbooks that my aunt created during her lifetime, and we used it as the cover to a collection of her recipes which we gave to two of our cousins who both had weddings last summer.

Auntie Nita, as we called her, was my mother's only sister. A maiden aunt all her life, she was our second mother, the person whose lap we sat in when we got in trouble, the sewer of our Barbie clothes, the baker of the cookies and cakes that marked all the family celebrations. She was a devoted daughter in the old Italian way. She never married and devoted her life to caring for my grandmother, especially after my grandfather's death.

This is a poem I wrote shortly after her death:

Anita,

You have broached the Great Divide
The nearest any of us are to
Mystery
And the farthest we are from
Understanding
Both we have in you.
How much easier to have you here
Baking, calling, caring,


My dreams of you
Tumble like
Stones being polished
Smooth, hard
Rounds of fear,
Bright from ritual
Polishing with the
Sour, rough silica of worry
Prayer beads in
Reverse.

Lord,

Stretch my faith
Demand that I believe
In order to
Live.


These are the promised sketches of the orchids from Saturday's visit.
The Jade Vine had flowers that hung in candelabras like bananas, but the flower looked more like a green pepper. The green itself was close to Dayglo, an eerie, other-worldly green that somehow reminded me of flesh. The yellow and brown orchid, the Mysore Clockvine, hung from very woody, thick vine that they had trained over a beautiful pool. The flowers were delicate and the stems hung like pendants from a chandelier. The Corsage Orchid, Cattleya, was much more beautiful in a naturalized setting than on a wrist on a crowded dance floor, yet they were still as showy as parrots preening. Their fragrance was heady and romantic, while most other wild orchids had no scent.

I used the Rotring Rapidograph pens I just bought on Danny Gregory's recommendations. You can't see to much of the line under the pastels, but I really like them, especially the thinnest nib, .18. I finally have a pen thin enough to make elegant cross-hatching. I love pastels because I am a color junkie, but I don't have any proper training in how to use them Whenever I pick up a book about pastels, I am immediatlely overwhelmed because each pastel involves about 10 steps. So until I find the time to take a class, I just use them like crayons.

It is snowing this morning, big flakes, kind of heavy. I can't imagine it will accumulate since the ground has warmed up so much. I was outside yesteday with only a long-sleeve shirt and a vest.

Time to switch on the lawyer hat, trowel on some make-up and get to court.

Find a little bit of your passion today, even if it's Monday.


POSTCARDS FOR NURSING HOMES

My friend, Christine Adams, a wonderful artist, is sponsoring a great project. Essentially, it involves making postcards of any kind and sending them to her. She will distribute them at thenursing home where she is artist in residence. It is a worthwhile, altruistic endeavor, and you'll have fun getting out your rubber stamps and other goodies and making a few cards. Here are the particulars:

I am proposing a postcard project as part of my third semester in an
MFA program. I'm hoping that you will all join me in my effort.
Enclosed is my proposal. Please let me know what you think. Cheers!
Christine Adams

Postcard Project

I am the Artist in Residence in a four-building campus for the elderly.
I am also working on a Masters program at Goddard College. I've
proposed a postcard project as part of my third semester work and I'm
asking for your help.

The seniors I work with span gender, race, and economic circumstances.
The common denominator of many is the lack of outside contact and the
fact that they are older citizens. I've noticed that cards and pictures
are generally posted in resident's rooms for all to see. The message
is, "See, someone somewhere cares for me!"

I am asking that you make an original postcard, sent to me and labeled
"To a friend." I will distribute these among the residents of the
nursing home. The campus I serve has four buildings and nearly one
thousand residents.

Postcards can:

. Establish a link to the world outside of the complex.
. Make the resident receiving the card feel important.
. Provide a small special piece of art for someone who otherwise might
not be able to incorporate an original artwork into his or her home.
. Perform a meaningful act of kindness.

Because of the patient privacy act, I must distribute the cards myself.
However, if you wish, you can encourage a reciprocal card from the
senior. A return reply is unlikely in most cases for a variety of
reasons. However the person who receives your card may choose to
respond.

My role is to solicit the cards and to receive, sort, track, and
distribute them. I plan to exhibit the cards on a display wall before
they are delivered to the residents. Imagine a display of postcards
more than eighty feet wide by forty inches high! What an impressive
outreaching of humanity to be a part of! You may never know the effect
your card had but be assured it will be treasured. Working with this
population for five years I have seen that any act of kindness means a
great deal and is not lightly received.

I would also like to establish a site on the web where I can display
pictures of the wall of received cards so that you can have a way of
seeing the impact of your work. Without violating privacy I would also
like to tell a few stories of the recipients so that you may realize a
measure of satisfaction from participating in the project.

The success of the project will never be fully known, but like a pebble
in a pond the ripples will multiply. Most of this population will keep
your cards. Other visitors may see your card and decide to contribute
also. You may even feel moved to get involved in a nursing home close
to where you live.


To sum up the project:

. I am asking you to create and send a handmade postcard approximately
4" X 6" to me labeled "To a friend" to be distributed to a nursing home
resident. Please send the card on or before April 31, 2004.
. The card may be painted, collaged, in fabric, digitally manipulated,
whatever you decide. When making your card remember that older eyes
appreciate clear and large lettering.
. Please include your name, address, and email address with your card.
I will track the project and provide a report at a later date.
. Because you'll be sending the above enclosure with your card it is
probably wise to use an envelope.
. If you have friends, family, or fellow artists that would like to
create a card please encourage them. This is an opportunity to be
included in a very special exhibit.
. Before distributing the cards I will exhibit them as a group. The
exhibit will be a part of the report.
. The address to use is: To a Friend, c/o Christine Adams, 796 Nelson
Street, Rockville, MD 20850. My email is . If you write to me with a
question please use "Postcard Project" as your subject.

Thank you to all who chose to participate. With your help I know we
can enrich the lives of the recipients.


I know you were expecting an orchid sketch, but I haven't had time to scan anything in. The Orchid Show was beautiful. When we entered the Victorian glass conservatory from 1902 at The New York Botanical Garden, we first saw a huge display of hundreds of the same wild orchids planted in two massive logs that crossed a pond. The galleries were filled with filled with tropical orchids and rainforest plants in naturalized displays. Seeing the orchids growing as they do in the wild was spectacular. Most grow on trees, in nests of hanging tree moss. I have some sketches I'm working on and hope to post later.

The Garden just opened a gorgeous Museum Shop. There was even a section devoted to garden journals, watercolor pen and pencils, sketchbooks, watercolor kits, Lama Li journals, reproduction vintage labels and cards and fabulous wrapping paper. There were shelves and shelves of books ( I limited myself to two), tables of orchids for sale, pots from Italy, too many scented candles, and too many people. And this was on a rainy Saturday morning.

Afterwards, we drove the few blocks to Arthur Avenue and had Veal Milanese and stuffed artichokes for lunch. My mother enjoyed our walk through the Arthur Avenue market where workers sit rolling cigars by hand, a huge crowd was lined up for overstuffed Italian heroes, and I bought two pounds of baby artichokes to sautee for dinner.

We also made our usual stop at the pork butcher and took photos of the rabbits and goats hanging in the window, along with the very scary skinned sheep heads, replete with grinning teeth. We just breathed in the aroma of the Madonna Bread Bakery (everyone is doing low carbs) (yes, you're right, we still bought an ate cannolies - do they have carbs???) It was nice to get my mother out of the house and to have lunch with her and two of my sisters. It's rare that we can all get away on a midday on the weekend. Next time, we'll drag my other sister along also.


Lately, I've been having such a good time posting that I begin to wonder if I am alone in the thrill I get from sharing my writing and art with strangers. It took me a long time to get up my nerve to post my art. I know what level artist I am (novitiate). I share my art to show what makes gives me such joy, what keeps me going through a week of boring depositions and tedious court appearances, and what fills me with butterflies when I crack open a new journal, run my hand over the creamy page and place the nib of the pen onto the paper and begin to make my mark.

I was thrilled to read this post at Hoarded Ordinaries, where Lorianne explains so eloquently why she blogs and why she shares her photography. It's all about love , she says. Love Love Love.

Love to all of you who check in here, love to those who post comments, love to you who have faith that I'll have something interesting to say and a little drawing to go with it. Love to the blogging community who post my blog in their links, who give me exciting and interesting posts to read each day, and who make me feel like I am part of a necklace of bright jewels humming with anticipation in cyber space.

I love you all.


A very rainy, gray, dreary Saturday morning. But I'm off to the orchid show at New York Botanic Gardens. Tra-laa! A Bit of spring and color. I'm bringing the sketchpad, watercolor pencils, Zig pen, sketching pencils, and my to-die-for, creamy Schminke pastels ..

Assignment: everyone draw something until I get back.