The Juice

 The Eclectic Electrics

The stone ponies

(These are still damp so, a little wet thread porn here)

The cloth this time

 

It's going to be awhile before I can get all the cloth processed. One piece at a time, hand-rinsed, washed, rinsed, and depending on the run-off, maybe repeat the entire process.

There's a lot of textures and embroidery across a variety of types of cloth. Most of it came to me ironed to perfection. Sorry, it's not going out that way.

...and there's another medium - sized batch of cloth still steeping in the magic sauce and there was plenty of dye left in the shakers. We are expecting storms midday, so that's going to be my first order of business after coffee . 

We voted yesterday. I'm in the Georgia 13th House District and our candidate won! I was quite freaked out to find that only 23 votes were cast ahead of me at 1pm. But folks showed up.

The plan is, once the scrap basket is full, I'm going to pack and weigh a scrap bag and then take a video of an unpacking so people can see just what they are getting for their money. 

My companions

 The elders...Salem and Bailey 

And the young guns. Bong and Sophie. 

From go to done ~ gratitude.

 

From running the list and making ready. 

Thank you, Colin, for the heavy lifting and water management. 

For the music that keeps me moving forward when the sweat drips into my eyes. 

Thanks for the dappled shade from the mimosa seedling that has become a tree in the past few years. Alas, your days are numbered.

Thanks to the donors who saw potential in old and unused linens, sheets, napkins, and garments.

Thanks to the patrons who have supported this madness with loyalty all these years.

and thanks to Serendipity for turning out some very fine first fruits. 

These are the kinds of results that keep me going.

August slip sliding away

 

 

Bringing black back into play was a shock. A little of that shit goes a long way. There may be some real mudhens in this batch.

Summer has turned her face and looked over her shoulder at us coyly. "I'm almost done with you, peasants." 

Mid-nineties during the day and mid-sixties at night, and after a few days of neglect, the pool has taken on that green tinge that won't be turned back.  It's my fault for buying one last tub of chlorine tabs. 

 

The hours

The western light at Jake's is fey. There is no capturing what appears to the naked eye. It's much warmer and more resonant than this; the greenery skulks. As you watch, the colors change, and a cow out there in the pasture moans and groans.  

Jake's two cats read the invisible messages from my furred posse at great length.  The same thing happens in reverse when I get home. Mine are all over and in the bag smelling what cat life is like in a strange place days away.

At home I have a catnip plant growing out on the high deck. I brought a fistful of stalks and leaves for Nibbler and Milo. Much hilarity ensued. The silliness followed by delicious naps.

 

Charlie is enjoying seventh grade. He seems to take it all in stride. 
 

Then

 

A way of seeing.

 Memory markers. 

Several friends, both in the flesh and the vaporous sort, have put me in mind of keeping my mind. I have never had a good memory for names, and a large part of that was being lazy because I was married to a walking cultural database. The man read the TV guide. He knew the names of the studio musicians on most albums. He always knew the names of supporting actors in movies. And what book the movie was made from. Why should I stress? 

Now I'm reminded that those blank spaces need attending to. Connecting the face and the action with a name or title. Puzzling it out, even if it takes five steps to get there. I'm not a big fan of physical exercise, but brainwork gives me instant payoff.

 I've also recently started wearing hearing aids. Taking an active part in conversations is really nice. 

The purple box is a relic of Spring 1967. I took the train alone to interview for the School of Visual Arts. Here's how my memory works: keep the good stuff, leave the trash behind. 

I remember nothing of the interview at all. Wherever my brain was at the time, whatever nonsense came out of my mouth, they bought my story. I don't even recall what was in my portfolio. Zero!

What I do remember. Taking these pictures in a booth in Grand Central Station before I hailed my first cab. I can still smell the acrid chemicals that lingered on the filmstrip as it dropped into the hopper. 

~Grand Central was and remains overwhelming. It's a portal into history. The track I came and went on, 49, faced the Oyster Bar that I never set foot inside. It never seemed to be open during the daytime. A vampire hangout. 

~The newsstand was a marvel! I took one of every free paper. The East Village Other, the Village Voice and a copy of the NY Post because my Dad always bitched about not being able to get it in the 'burbs.

~The relief I felt when the interview was over and I stepped out the double doors onto 23rd street and I still had an entire day with no one to account to, some cash in my pocket and, best of all, no one knew who I was. I could be anyone, least of all an aspiring artist. It was a magical feeling of invisibility despite the chrome yellow felt hat. 

Takashimaya was right in midtown. I bought a kit with a Chinese ink stick, stone, and brush for calligraphy. About ten of those colored acrylic boxes for keeping everything. A striping brush that I used for eye makeup.  

Somehow I made my way to the East Village. As if time and tide could have stopped me. I bought beads and incense, and feathers, and brass glasses with round green prisms for lenses. I bought JOB rolling papers just to say I had them. 

Somewhere in my clutch of important papers there's a transcript . First year? Second? Without looking for it I can tell you that the art grades came in a pale second to a literature and language course. 

I wish had taken a bigger bite of the Apple at the time. 

Fair warning. No filter.

 

taking the waters

 

It looks like this right now, except for a few stray leaves from the storm last night. I found and patched the slight leak. The pump is running even if the filter stopped working years ago. The little chlorine ducks wander, keeping things drinkable come Armageddon. I brushed the inside down, a good upper body workout.

The past few days have been pool-perfect. mid-90s. high, drunken sheep clouds, the occasional whisper of a breeze. I dog paddle in a circle, snagging leaves and tucking them over the railing. Then I drift for a while in a seat that suspends me so gently it would be easy to fall asleep and get scorched, except the balance point for me and the sling suspended on a bent pool noodle is critical and must be maintained by shifts as simple as a deep breath. The least amount of effort needed to keep from being tipped out.

This is the sensation that makes all the trouble worthwhile. Floating. Flipping the bird at gravity and all the trouble it wreaks on my old frame. My fractured and compressed vertebrae come off one another and relax while I float. 

I can close my eyes and remember the sensation of surrender that I felt the first time I was allowed into the pond away from my mother's reach. I can remember falling face down and coming up sputtering to see my father laughing at my amazement and lack of fear. He crouched on the verge, in his shiny wingtips, bowling shirt and brilliantined hair. Going somewhere.

My mother sat in the water in her ruched two-piece, passed her lipstick-stained cigarette back to him on the off chance that I might need catching. I did not. I stood up in water chest-deep when I had not yet walked on dry land I was so fat. I stepped back and away from her and felt the freedom of buoyancy. It felt like wings.

Rosie was ready to lunge, the look on her face both proud and apprehensive. My dad applauded and laughed again. The water cradled and held me. Loved me, rubber pants and all. I remember everything. My mother took this picture, her best friend Ezara, holding me upright. I wouldn't be one until mid-October.

                                                                                🌊🌊🌊

These days, I have a small Bluetooth speaker that connects to music in my phone, zipped into a sandwich bag. I put my back to the house and dream into the woods. The water is a perfect (for me) 80 degrees. Some herb would be nice, but not necessary.

Yesterday, there was work to do. A hard assessment. We bought the pool, and Jim built the deck in 1998.  Twenty-eight years ago and that's the same pool liner and infrastructure. The decking hasn't fared as well, but it's only wood and has had little to no maintenance. You can only pressure wash wood so many times.

While I drifted, I counted the boards, measured by eye, and did the math. 1800 dollars, give or take,just in lumber. Colin can do the labor. The supporting framing is still solid - Jim always overbuilt structures, bless him. 

A central steel support column on the main deck -the dye deck- needs to be replaced because someone has been letting salt leach down through the boards for years. The wood is pickled, but the steel corroded through. 

That task out of the way, I switched over to the big tube with the mesh bottom and drink holders so I could take up notebook and pen for a while with my sombrero giving me just enough shade to scribble. I sometimes get pages and pages which usually boil down to one or two lines of dialogue or an incident. Something to move the story along. 

Yes, I am brown and wrinkled, and the story will wrap up at an abandoned beachfront cottage. Any day now, but that would require hours with the laptop and it's going to be another beautiful summer day. 

Taking risks

I've been scavenging cards from the Goddess Tarot for years now. Mostly they become bookmarks, never to return to the deck. 

Since I never used the deck for Tarot, it felt better to just make the individual cards useful. I also don't feel bad if I accidentally leave one in a library book. This is the first time I've cut one up. Painless.

The Page of Wands learns by taking risks. I helped him along. 

These spherical elements are helping the whole piece along.

I was listening to a ball game and working on this one well past dark. When I finally stopped and snapped off the lamp, the view up to the grove was breathtaking. I didn't know the new streetlight (I called in the request to have it fixed when the bulb burned out) was so bright. 

 

Fine focus & the big picture

 

When do you say Stop?

As much as there already is, that blue background has deviled my eye so much that I considered cutting it all away. 

I thought about using some AI tool to remove the blue but that felt wrong on several fronts.

Then I remember how integrating other bits of cloth help soothe that imbalance.

This bit of silk from over ten years ago may find a place soon. I was visiting family in New York and went to a thrift store in Chappaqua. I know I'd never pay more than ten bucks for any used garment, but the skirt that this silk came from might have rung that bell.

It was very long, mid calf on me. A size 12 waist. One inch deep pleats all the way around with an unpleated underskirt. Probably four or five yards of silk once I got it disassembled. These scraps of red are all that's left of it. 

Real silk is hard to come by, but so worth the hunt. 

Bong (the Void) is often invisible until he moves. I imagine that's why black Panthers are such successful hunters. They just lay there in the dark with their mouths open and their claws ready. 

After a day-long search, I finally turned up the rough outline that I drew up for The Monkeytown Murders.

Another too big book in the making, but many of the scenes are already written. The bones are there, much of the muscle and nerves. I'm determined to finish Slash and Burn before I start on this puzzle. Just putting my hands on this has greased the wheel. 

Lost and found

"I was looking for something else when"....How many times have I posted that phrase?  I was looking for a rolled up or folded large piece of paper and turned up some forgotten work. Of course you forget it if it's squirreled away for safekeeping. 

 And the final magic of the day? I found the paper I was looking for. A big chunk of that plastic backed grid paper that I still have yards of on a roll. 

Note to self - redo both design walls when the dresser gets moved. 

Anyway, a while back I laid out a sort of graphic outline of the next book on this 3x4 foot section of grid paper. A sprawling saga in the making, I fear. 

Oh well. As long as I'm paddling this boat, I'm going to be running contrary  to all conventional publishing wisdom. With AI horning in at every juncture, I could be right more than 50% of the time. 

"Travel Well" by Jude Hill     2021 (in memory of our Michelle)

 Jim's neice sent me a bundle of pictures I've never seen. 

A few years after we moved to Georgia, Jim's folks came for a visit. At first glance I thought, "What beach are we at?" Then I realized that dark swath was forest and that is the city of Atlanta at the horizon of a beautiful spring or summer day. City boy used to tease me about going barefooted everywhere. He said, "I can't decide if it's wierd or hot." 

I went there a few times on my own to lay out and baste a king-sized quilt. People were so curious about what I was doing. I felt like I was giving a lecture while I worked just answering questions. The most asked question. "Do you sell these?" 

Eyes to the sky

 

It's a wrap

 

I wasn't there for the drop-off this morning, but I'll hear about it tonight.

Looking at this picture, it's hard to imagine what seventh grade will be like. 

He's always been interested in my past. Scandalized and outraged about what some people had to deal with. Making connections with changes that haven't yet happened. Stuff that seems to be going backward. 

These past few weeks, I've been asking a lot of questions about his social world. It's very hard to keep from drawing (unfavorable) comparisons.

I voiced my concerns about screen time and behavior. He points out the errors in my thinking and judgements. 

Yesterday we had a hard discussion about the use of sarcasm that had both of us in tears at one point or another. 

We worked it out over a box of tissues, some laundry folding and grocery store Chinese food. 

On the last (for a while) trip to Mathnasium, I discovered that he has a fine singing voice. An unaffected tenor that will probably slip into a baritone before long. The Everly Brothers "Dream" came on from my phone. 1600 songs he's been hearing since I first rocked him to sleep. 

I turned the phone his way and let the lyrics come up on the screen and he held down his end of the two part harmony effortlessly. We invented Honda Karaoke. 

                                      ~●~

This little bit of chaos is starting to have a voice. I wasn't able to take it with me to Jake's. Milo would have made my life a living hell. He steals stuff and hides it. 

~●~

These last photos to remind me how about using black dye has a richness all its own. 

I had forgotten! It's time to get back to business. All of it.

Not everything that happens in darkness is evil or dangerous.

Darkness, darkness, be my pillow
Take my head and let me sleep
In the coolness of your shadow
In the silence of your dream

Darkness, darkness, hide my yearning
For the things that cannot be
Keep my mind from constant turning
Towards the things I cannot see now
The things I cannot see now
The things I cannot see.

"Darkness, darkness" 1969  the Youngbloods

It's a year since we brought Sophie home from the animal shelter.