Artist Alexei Jawlensky, Russia, Germany
title will be provided in comments
oil wax medium on cardboard, 1928
ETA to add here, rather than in comments:
The name of the painting is Sorrow, the word I searched in art titles first because of the school shooting in Nashville. Before I learned of the shooting, I’d been thinking of the losses of two important women I know.
Both women lived long, full lives, one dying in December at age 98, and one dying in February at age 96. They were smart, strong women full of many talents and were greatly loved by those blessed to know them. Both showed me enormous kindnesses at different times in my life, and each of them had a son who changed my life and helped shape who I am in profound ways. I will always be grateful for those men and their mothers.
I can’t help but wonder what amazing things three nine-year-old children and three adults in their sixties would have continued bringing to the world if it weren’t just so important that people in this country remain “free” to buy assault weapons that exist for the sole purpose of quickly killing large numbers of humans.
“My mind is a jumble,” Riley wrote in a poem (I mentioned this here once before, sometime in 2020). I tell the people who live with me or interact with me now, and who’ll hopefully be around if I, like my parents before me, grapple with some form or degree of dementia in my last years, that they must, absolutely must, tell the people in whose care I’m placed that the population I talk about, the people whose skins and brains and lives I seem to shift in and out of, are not a sign of madness, multiple personality disorder, or some brand of schizophrenia (a disease I barely understand and probably shouldn’t even reference).
No, I am afflicted by characters. I contain multitudes of lives and minds and hearts who never leave me. Each of them can, all at once or at different times, be my own heart, my soul, my memory, my past, present, future. In all the folds of my brain, they coexist among a lifetime of friends, colleagues, family members, heartbreakers, healers, poets, liars: shining examples of all that is flawed and sublime about humans. When my last chapter unfolds, I may not be able to say who is real and who is imagined.
Despite my urge to say more related to International Women’s Day about what’s going on in the U.S. and worldwide, I can express it no better than this. Be you. Be kind. Persevere.
On a personal note, thinking a lot about Riley on the date of his birth. It never mattered how much of our lives were lived away from each other, or all we never had enough time to tell each other. The core connection was unbreakable… and remains so.
It’s a false narrative that being a feminist means hating men. A desire for equality, inclusion, and parity are not indicators of hate. The desire to prevent and eradicate those things… That’s hate.
This is one of the paintings I found a week ago as I was writing a chapter featuring my Musician. The scene I created reminded me of a time long ago. I’d been living back in an area near my (two) hometowns after graduating from college. When I was driving through one of those towns, I saw a sign on a local bar announcing that my old friend Riley would be playing there.
We’d lost touch; I heard and knew things about his life, but I generally followed the adage let sleeping dogs lie. Some friendships are meant for a place and time, and then they fade away. I went home and wrote a poem of eight verses that summed up those earlier years of friendship.
The full poem was sad, wistful, and now rereading it, I see it conveys truths I’d forgotten of how people other than us damaged the friendship. Maybe we’d let that happen because we thought it was time to put away childish things.
I couldn’t stop thinking of him. It wasn’t a romance thing. We were both married. I wondered to Lynne if I should go see him play. She and a friend of hers offered to go with me. So we did.
I don’t remember if he was playing piano when we got there, or guitar. But it was surely when he was playing guitar that he glanced out at the tables and… I would wish everyone in life could just once see someone look out with shock, with disbelief, that turns to wonder, and then to utter joy at the sight of you.
It was the resurrection of a friendship that wouldn’t stop until the day he did, on this date, January 16, 2008. There are a million stories; some I’ve told here, some I never will. But for a brief moment, in my novel, I got to bring my amazing friend to life again using a character who is unlike him in almost every way except talent.
Riley will always be alive in my heart and my art. These are the last four lines of that old poem.
I’ve fallen in love with John O’Donoghue’s work. On part of the printed material on this painting are the words “I want to run…hide…” I had already been thinking of a post for 1/16, sharing photos from my past, that would begin, “Do you ever want to run away to, and hide in, a certain moment from among your memories…”
Later, unrelated, I began searching Google images for something for today’s post, using the search term “art with guitar in the title.” This painting caught my eye from among many, and only after I decided to use it did I realize it contains lines from U2’s “Where the Streets Have No Name,” tying it in theme, if not level of talent, to a painting I did last year in honor of a character–all of which I’ll talk about more on my post a week from now, which is also a Monday. Probably I should have saved this entire thing for then, but I was so excited to discover a new-to-me artist, marveling again at the way the Universe assists us when we ask for and are open to answers. I’ll use another of O’Donoghue’s paintings on that post that more closely matches the memories I plan to share.
Hope you tune in again on the 16th for my follow-up.
Tom and I watched Peter Jackson’s The Beatles: Get Back 2021 documentary over three nights–Saturday, Monday, and tonight (Wednesday). It’s a brilliant documentary. It’s been many, many years since I saw the Let It Be documentary, and I tried really hard not to read reviews or spoilers about this one, because I knew it’d be a while before I could devote time to seeing it plus be emotionally in the right head space for it.
While working on the documentary, Peter had an idea when Paul was on his 2019 tour. He wanted to pitch it to him, but then the pandemic hit, nobody was touring, so he figured the moment had passed. When Paul announced his tour this year, Jackson reached out, worried Paul would think he was being a geeky fan boy, but Paul was all for it. Here’s what they put together for the first encore of Paul’s concerts.
Magic, magic, magic.
We’d have had a blast if we could have watched The Beatles: Get Back with Riley. It would have taken a lot longer, but Tom would have learned way more about Beatles band dynamics than I can tell him. Plus Riley would have given us a private concert of Beatles music, and I’D be the geeky fan girl for all of it.
ETA Fun Fact: Lynne’s cousin Nicky took the two of us to see the movie Let It Be on Thursday, July 16, 1970.
To celebrate International Women’s Day 2022 at 1:6 scale, here is another of the dolls from Mattel’s Inspiring Women Series.
I found this doll I think last October when I was in Barnes & Noble. The associate who checked me out was surprised and said he hadn’t been aware the store had the doll and he thought it was great. I got the sense that he might be going upstairs to put one on hold for himself–not because he collects Barbies, but because of his admiration for Eleanor Roosevelt.
Roosevelt was the longest-serving First Lady in the U.S. White House as wife of Franklin D. Roosevelt, but there is so much more to know about her. I recommend a crash course via her Wikipedia entry to get a sense of the complex woman she was and the human rights advocate she became.
My mother, having been a child during the Depression, was a huge supporter of both FDR and Eleanor Roosevelt. On one of our vacation trips to Callaway Gardens in Georgia, my parents took Lynne and me to visit The Little White House, the Roosevelts’ home in Warm Springs, Georgia.
I’m sure that trip contributed to my interest in the Roosevelts, as well as being folded into my own early passion for women’s rights and civil rights. As always, for me, knowing about the more human qualities of a trailblazer actually makes a person more inspirational. We are not saints; none of us are without flaws. Roosevelt made changes in herself and in the world that remind me that we can all be better, do better.
I can’t let this date pass without expressing my desire to pick up the phone and wish one of my more personal life’s inspirations a happy birthday. I miss you and love you always, MVP.
In a conversation with a longtime friend who hasn’t worked with tarot cards in many years, she wondered if I was doing so on the regular as my blog seemed to indicate. Not at all. I’d gone years without doing readings for anyone, even longer since I did them for myself.
I think one reason I recently pulled out any decks at all is because in my next saga (if this one ever comes to a close and right now its title seems to be 1974 Lasted a Century), there’s a character who has always intrigued me because she’s a young woman of contradictions. I’d been thinking of her (the second series is connected to this first one) and trying to recall things about her. And I remembered that she’s artistic and had once created her own tarot deck and there was a little story activity around that.
Then: I’ve occasionally featured some of my boxes on here, and that’s where most of the decks live, in wooden boxes. Then in September, I did the Idol Challenge with Dennis Wilson as my subject, and a couple of times I’ve shown the Dennis box I made, and it holds tarot cards.
Then: For fun, I did readings for a fictional character or two (not the one I’m speaking of above) and realized random cards could actually offer fiction writing prompts for my characters if I feel stuck.
Then: I had some writing challenges last year, so since I’ve been looking at the decks, I decided to see if pulling a few cards would help me better organize my thoughts on writing and not let other people make me doubt myself.
Then: I am always thinking about muses and I love the corvids, so the Muse and Crow decks jumped out at me. I always figure there’s a reason (beyond just, I AM IN A DAMN PANDEMIC AND ISOLATING AT HOME I MISS MY FRIENDS LET ME SPEND A LITTLE MONEY ON MORE STUFF SO I CAN DIVERT MYSELF–apparently my inner voice is an uppercase one, maybe even cursive, who knows) so I go with it, figuring it’ll be clear at a later point.
In other words, several things converged, and when Mark asked me how many decks I have, I figured why not do a regular Thursday post with tarot cards as the subject, because they both start with “T,” and though this blog has many random subjects, which is how I like it, that randomness may be a foolish idea because without focusing on anything, I’m not reaching a readership that wants that one thing, whatever that one thing is. Then again, you know what else I’m not reaching? Trolls who wander through people’s social media accounts to say hateful things to them or their readers/commenters. So…all good.
The blog’s just a gander at whatever pings my brain at any given time, and designating certain days (Button Sundays, Mood Mondays, Tiny Tuesdays, Tarot Thursdays, Photo Fridays) keeps me from having to think too hard of a subject. That was most helpful when I was employed and working 16-hour days, and now it’s helpful when I try to manage my creative time better. Fiction writing comes first, and by imposing a little structure on my blog, I don’t have to use a lot of energy trying to figure out what to post about and can spend my blog time actually writing text and finding photos.
If that all makes sense.
If there’s anything at all that I ponder or reflect on or wonder about, especially whether my muse or my higher self or my subconscious is trying to get through to me, it’s the random music–from a vast repertoire of music I own or remember or love or connect to people, places, and times of my life–that pops into my head.
But I have to confess, I have NO DAMN IDEA why “My Wild Love” is in my brain right now. I haven’t been listening to The Doors or thinking of The Doors or thinking of Jim Morrison. It’s my ear worm for no apparent reason. Which is how I came to choose today’s buttons from my own personal collection, and I may or may not have used them here before.
So yeah, sure, hi Jim Morrison, hi Doors, hi the friend who’s part of my personal zeitgeist that includes The Doors. Happy to have you visit my brain.
I can’t let this date pass without expressing my desire to pick up the phone and wish one of my more personal life’s inspirations a happy birthday. I miss you and love you always, MVP.