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August 2012
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October 2012

Saturdays at Starbucks

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Hello to all my sweet friends. Thank you for those who had a chance to send such supportive comments before I took my post down at the beginning of the week. Truth be told, I forget that my blog is set up to post on FB, I have lots of people who read this on FB who are extended family, friends of my kids, etc., and I just lacked the courage.

This depression and anxiety syndrome is hereditary and my Mom is struggling mightily with it right now, herself. The anti depressants my doctor gave me made me sick and my husband insisted I stop taking them, but I couldn't face calling my doc and asking for a different kind. I am feeling better right now, but it ebbs and flows. I am trying very hard to not react so compulsively to worries and stress, which is also very hereditary in my family. Mostly, I am trying to take things lightly and see this particular period in the perspective of a life long lived.

As always, it is my husband, children, and close friends who pull me through this by just letting me vent and making me go through the motions of regular life, including getting out and moving my butt.

Right now, I am preparing my talks for Art Is You, and getting the projects nice and shiny with the awesomely talented help of Kathy Nesi. I am looking forward to being Weird, Wild, and Wonderful for 4 days next weekend. It couldn't come at a better time!

I am signing off until after Art Is. I'll be back the week of October 8th. I haven't disappeared and hope you won't, either.  You are all charming, funny, and empathetic. You make me laugh, cry, and just feel like I have friends dropping by to shoot the breeze.

I look forward to rediscovering all that is Wild and Wonderful in my life (I've mastered the Weird, let's face it.)

 


Don't worry

I am over summer.

One minute I was painting pages and pages of blue stripes, blue striped espadrilled, blue striped tops, and blue striped banners, and the next: I was painting a Cinderella pumpkin and drinking a cup of tea.

 

Yes, it's true: a cup of tea was all I craved last Saturday night. So for me, officially, fall is here.

All the children, husbands, and significant others, as well as Cape Cod Cousins are meeting on the Cape this weekend for the Official Last Sail When We Hope Not to Freeze, Be Attached By Great Whites, and actually be out of bed For Early Morning High Tide (I am not leaving a wake up call myself.)

The pups are being boarded. Yes, makes me sad, but listen - last weekend? Cucciolo was up at 4:30 the first morning: cried off and on from 3 to 4 the second; and Bella Sera decided that 5:00 was a good time to jump on us just when Cucciolo had fallen back to sleep.

It's embarassing when you are trying to read a book and it keeps slipping our of your hands because you are so exhausted. So this weekend, to actually not feel like I am a sleep-deprived nursing mother, and because I prefer a husband who is not sound asleep by 7:30 p.m., they are being boarded.

In other seasonal news, I plugged in the heated mattress pad last night and went in search of the big duvet. It's so cuddly! And I wore regular patent leather loafers instead of sandals to work. And a scarf. And put away the big white tote. I also ate half a pumpkin scone; made gravy tonight (tomato with meatballs - don't make me explain why we call it gravy, just google it or use my search bar); and Mr. Pom switched over to red wine.

What more signs do you want??

In more exciting news, Kathy called me at work - a rare occurrence - to tell me that a Paper Source had opened near us. Be still my heart! Managed to get there after work, in between grocery shopping and making gravy, meatballs, lasagna, and 2 kinds of baked mac for the weekend. While there, a lovely woman told me I looked familiar and we started talking and she used to own the local stamp store. Of course, she remembered me and my sisters cause we helped put a wing on it with our purchases. It closed some time ago and since then she's had a variety of jobs, but now is assistant manager at Paper Source.  Small world! I managed to restrain myself from buying every piece of incredible art paper that they had, resisted the gorgeous desk-sized Kraft paper calendar, and instead bought a small Papaya one that is too cute for words. There was another one there I have my eye on, though. Oh, I also some bought some blue striped linen ribbon and some red checked red striped fabric tapes. And some Kraft paper hearts, and assorted odd sized cardstock cards.

I fear much  damage to the wallet, during Austerity Month, no less. I will just blame it on Kathy and tell Mr. Pom that she kidnapped me and made me buy everything at gunpoint. The store  is, however, next to one of our fave sushi places, so perhaps I can park the Mister in there and scoot in when he's elbow deep in an eel roll.

In other news, I had tickets to see The Avett Brothers this week in Central Park. This was the night there was tornado warnings everywhere. Needless to say, it was cancelled and changed to Monday night, so we have to run home from the Cape (took the day off), pick up the pups, then drive into the city.

And then! Next Saturday! I participated in the Global Citizen Festival lottery to win tickets, after I earned 8 points on line by reading various articles and sharing them on facebook. It is the largest charity concert - 60,000 tickets for The Great Lawn - to end poverty and hunger.

Micalangela did it and I was insanely jealous that she won tickets and choose to take  her best friend on her birthday to see the concert, which includes Neil Young, The Black Keys, and The Foo Fighters. also outdoors in Central Park. So I went online, earned 8 points at there website, and a a week or two later, got an email that I'd won 2 tickets! It's practically all day event and involves getting there early and not leaving the stage area, and using porta potties, but I think I can get Mr. Pom to go to see Neil Young and a promise that I'd read that Minka Kelly (former girlfriend of Derek Jeter) will be making an appearance. 

I also have tickets to see Dar Williams in October and three days later, Ingrid Michaelson. And a sweet friend invited me to go with her to see Leonard Cohen in December at Madison Square Garden.

I am concert blessed.

I love live music. It fills in the holes in my heart. Makes me dance. Leap. Stand up. Scream. Clap wildly. Sometimes cry.

So yeah, I'm cool. Summer's over, but the concert season has begun.


While Words Have Temporarily Eluded Me, Here Is a Post from Early Summer that I Never Published For Some Unknown Reason

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We are following the path to summer betwixt and between the raindrops. We are up with the birds ( i.e. the dogs are up wti the cirds and we have no choice but to follow) and we find ourselevs outside quite early. I resist it with all my grumpiness, but once out and about I feel myself expand into my favorite season as the warmth loosens the knots of winter and a damp spring, and the coil tightly wound inside of me as we ran around preparing for oh so many things.  I think I forgot how to just be.

 

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My goal is to wander wherever summer leads me on its sunlit path. Work is work and dogs are dogs and house is  house and errands and chores are errands and chores and we have to eat something so there must be groceries bought or we shall go bankrupt wtih restaurant bills and too many trips to the gourmet market for expensive cheeses to eat in lieu of dinner. (When I was in said gourmet market after work today, a woman of my age announced to the counter help that her goal for the summer was not to cook a single night since all the children were out of the house. I need to get her phone number.)

Despite all of this, it is summer. A magical word to me, even after all these years. A time to read, to be outside, to sit around campfires, to be at the beach before the lifeguards, to sit in outdoor cafes, to head upstate to antique in Cold Spring, to find neighborhoods in the city to explore, and to eat as many meals outside as possible.

I do not think there is anything more luxurious than waking up on a summer morn and open a book before I get out of bed. There has to be at least a few days this summer when you roll out of bed and ignore the laundry to read a novel.  When we lived in Memphis, I used to get up very early with the kids, make lunches, drive them to school, and be back home before 7:30. I would make coffee, get the paper, and go lie down on my bed to drink my coffee and read the paper. I don't think my mother in law could have been more scandalized than if I  returned from the carpool with another man and got into the bed with him.

 

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Summer is for the paths not taken the rest of the year. Mornings are for whatever pursuits make you feel the freshness of the season.  You can dive into a stack of books and walk around with a cup of cornflakes until you find a comfortable spot on the lawn to roll out a blanket and read Cheryl Strayed's memoir, Wild: From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail. While you dip your feet into the kiddie pool or swing in the hammock, you can read her amazing journey on foot from Southern California to Oregon.  It is my Best Nonfiction Book of 2012.  

If you are like me, most mornings will see you driving to work and hoping for a little downtime in court so you can open the book you have in your totebag. If you are driving kids hither and yon, or waiting in dentist's office while they have their check ups, or if you are lucky enough to be able to leave the house very early with a beach chair and a coffee, as I did this Sunday, then I recommend you take along "  ".  The book is a coming of age novel about a very bright young girl who has a photographic memory, yet knows nothing about lifenothing about who lives in the Boston area in a family where the past is not discussed and questions are not askeddespite an affable and supportive father and a loving but depressed and withdrawn mother with her affable father and a mother who is frequently depressed and withdrawn

 

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I like to read a chapter of something before I begin to write. Another author's elegant sentences and vivid imagery raise my Sometimes a problem arises when I decided to just read one chapter of a new novel, say for example,  Seating Arrangements by Maggie Shipstead ,  recommended by my friend Diane because it is about a family who is about to have a wedding at their summer home on a pristine island in New England. One chapter turns to two then three and four and soon the sun is high in the sky and I've lost the morning.

 

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That is what summers are all about: losing track of the mornings, or afternoons, or evenings, or whole days that seem to disappear into the evanescence of evening and the pursuit of watching fireflies. Find a bush to hide under and bring your needle and thread, your brush and paints, your pad and pencil, or a big stack of books, a plate of toast with sesame seeds, a jar of raspberry jam. Summer will not wait for you to find it but it right outside the door.


The Art of Saturdays

 

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So hot on Farmer's Market day that my camera lens was fogging up. What do cactus leaves taste like? Do you boil them? Fry them? And how do you not get prickers in your mouth? Did I just write that?

It is raining, torrential cloudbursts of much-needed rain, accompanied by a tiny bit of thunder and very little wind. I am wearing an old fleece jacket I fished out of the hall closet because I refuse to leave the screened porch as I am all tidied up with painting journal, the newspaper, and two sleeping dogs. Finally, the rain gets heavier and the wind picks up and it's either abandon the porch while ye may or risk a laptop disaster, so I go.

Not far, though, just into the living room, to the wicker chair pulled up by the fireplace. I look at the fireplace and notice the cobwebs behind the grate and contemplate pulling it all out for a good cleaning, but resist the taxing job as today is get Art and Writing Done Day because the next few weekend will be busy.

 

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Or maybe...the lens had a smear? I would have this for lunch but there is NO food in this house today.

 

(My phone is buzzing like crazy in my pocket. Good thing I stopped typing to look at it. The National Weather Service somehow got my phone number and is texting to tell me that I need to take cover immediately because of Extreme Weather in our area and Tornado Warning. Hmm. When did I sign up for these warnings and if I did not, Big Brother has truly reached into my pocket. In any event, the sun is out now, so I have a feeling the tornado warning is a tad late (as so said Dorothy....i)

 

I don't think I've sat in this chair all summer. In fact, I don't recall the last time I sat in the living room. I use the porch for eating, lounging, reading, painting, and on the hottest nights, sleeping. Mr. Pom put the baseball game on low and if he sits on the porch sofa, he can see the hideous large screen TV that dominates the living room, and  he keeps me company.

The rain is pretty cool today. We haven't had any in ages and the hydrangeas, despite out best watering efforts, have begun to dry out into brown seed heads.It is the first change-of-season day, that day that makes you put on fleece and feel all snuggly, pull a package of lentils out of the cupboard and make the first soup, and sit in your living room and decide that you need more red things in here to cozy it up.

 

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    No, it definitely was the heat. Makes the berries and peaches look all dreamy...

 

It may even be the First Tea Day, though I don't usually inaugurate Cup of Tea Day until  late September. Do you drink tea in the summer? And not iced, but hot? I have this biological aversion to hot tea from mid-May to the end of September. I drink coffee, hot and iced, but always hot in the morning all year-round. In winter, I make several cups of tea a day, especially after dinner, leading to a checkered night's sleep interrupted by numerous trips to the bathroom. In summer, I am hot coffee in the morning, iced decaf by afternoon, and either hot or iced after dinner. I just can't stomach a cup of tea with the fans on. It doesn't make any sense, I know, but I am slave to my desires.

Last night, K and I traveled into the city for a rare Friday night Art & Girls evening. We slapped glazes of acrylics on tiny canvases and thought of words to emblazon courtesy of the delightful and charming Seth Apter, and Michele Luxenberg our lovely hostess of Little Bird Creations. It was a challenge to work small; I think I need to make a bigger mess to get back to the practice of layering acrylics. There just wasn't enough surface mass to work with, though I did a good job of getting paint everywhere. Working in acrylics after almost of year of watercolors was like running across an old friend on the street: you are thrilled to see them but wonder what you are going to talk about. After awhile, I remembered how they work and though most of what I did turned out muddy, I was glad for the refresher course and now must steel myself NOT to play with my various collections of Goldens acrylics, tube and fluid, cause I am supposed to stay FOCUSED on the books.  So although I am lusting after a bottle of Micacious Oxide, it must wait until October.

We all agreed last night that "mixed media artist" is just a pseudonym for "Wanna Have It All".  I am trying not to buy any art materials, fabric, paper, or books. We have declared September to be The Month of Austerity. And our trip to Dick Blick for a drawing slant board and various tubes of gouache and beautiful decorative paper and 10-inch letter stencils did not count because it was on Labor Day, the End of Summer Holiday, and thus we couldn't possibly be austere.

Austerity Month wouldn't be so bad except I told Mr. Pom about it and now he will hold me accountable. He likes to pop up from downstairs in the evening and catch me surfing Etsy or Zappos or worse, Amazon, and then I sigh and click off the tab, knowing full well that my cart will remain there for as long as I wish.

But what do I really need? Nothing more than a rainy Saturday, an old fleece jacket, two sleepy dogs, coffee, and

 

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Oh yes. I ordered it before the Austerity Month pledge, though it came afterwards, so it doesn't count. I dare you. In fact I double dare you NOT to buy it.  Warning: if you succumb, cross off the delivery day for you will get nothing done except run for your sketchbook and #2 pencil and paints and there goes the day. It's that good.


THE LAST ROSE

 

 

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Saturday Night on the Porch Listening to The Wine of Angels by Phil Rickman

 

Tis the last rose of summer,
Left blooming alone;
All her lovely companions
Are faded and gone.
-   Thomas Moore, The Last Rose of Summer, 1830

 

My blog sabbatical was much-needed and enjoyed. Perhaps even too short but I am afraid that if I stay away too long, I won't come back.  It does not take much to render me mute these days and I am protecting myself against it the best I can.

Summer's arc was bright and quick this year. Though when I think back to the beginning,  it's as though I am looking through the wrong end of the telescope at a wedding in distant galaxy light years away. It was the fireworks that started off a season of summer celebrations. 

Our children danced in and out of our days, coming home, leaving again, coming back, bringing friends from high school, from college, old roommates, cousins, boats and kayaks, bacon and eggs, ribs and hot dogs grilled under summer stars.

We saw meteors and phosphorescent waves, spouting whales, and -almost - Great White Sharks. We learned to sail again, fixed up an old Sailfish, kayaked while ospreys fished, tailed a bear in the woods, ate breakfast in the car while lightening crashed around us on the outer beach, had late night word games, and ate our weight in marshmallows around the firepit. We barely left our town but explored the coves and bays and inlets that we had only walked around for years. We sat up to our neck in the still water of the cove, were pummeled by waves, danced through sandbars, and used forensic techniques to find a cell phone in the sand as high tide approached.

And now, it is quiet. Everyone has gone back to their lives: new apartment for the newly-weds; new apartment, new job, and serious love for the boy; and off campus adventures for the girl. Everyone is doing exactly what they are supposed to be doing for their ages.

Including Mr. Pom and I. We are wading into the waters where the empty  nest floats. We are learning to cook for two, to take off into the city when we want, and to give each other space to breathe and grieve just a little that which has all past.

Here on pomegranatesandpaper, I suspect that there will be much less writing about family gatherings and elaborate holiday preparations. There will be little of those familial exchanges between child and parent. There is less of the daily to write about, at least for now as I find my footing on this new path.

I am bringing this blog into a new focus. You will find more writing about creativity,  about books I am reading, more postings of art that I create, and more stories about the blank page and the waiting canvas.

I hope you will stay, maybe even invite your friends, leave comments for me and for each other, and feel free to write and tell me what you want to hear about. I promise to post at least once a week, to upload art, and to share with you the adventures in Juggling, which appears to be my new occupation in these supposedly empty nest years, when I find myself busier than ever with family, extended family, and friends.

Life is interesting, that's for sure. I try to keep it real. And when I can't, Mr. Pom looks at me and says, "Snap out of it!"

Cause that's how we roll.