This was the year I got reading glasses, lost 12 lbs, and sprained my hand drinking coffee. The year I painted my way through the family’s portraits, and got a bit weird about fire hydrants. Reconnected with the cheesecake-baking, motorcycle-riding Marine friends of my college days. Baked a German pancake, many loaves of Japanese milk bread, and some less-than-triumphant pies. Struggled a bit with marriage and sadness and almost-cancer; started walking every night while listening to Led Zeppelin and crime podcasts, watching the stars to remind myself that none of it matters at all and everything is ok. Flew over the California wildfires. Stood for a long time in front of paintings in galleries; Nucleus in Portland, the Honolulu Museum of Art, touristy art shops, the bank that has two big paintings by a local artist who's name none of the staff can remember. Fruitlessly continued hunting an old serial killer in the maritime. Taught my younger son to use oil paint, listened to audio books and watched Stranger Things with my teenager, ran around the park with my daughter; sat knitting and listening to the kids trash-talk over card games and role-playing board games, sprawled out all over the floor beside my chair.
It was a fast year, and a good one, if a bit lonely-in-the-crowd feeling.
GOALS. This year I'm going to enter paintings in local art shows until one doesn't reject me, finish getting through the family portraits (aunt, cousins), make prints to sell, take the kids to Lake George in the summer, and train up my son properly so I can take him along to a painting workshop next year. And the next time my doctor calls me in to check how things are progressing/regressing, I'll tell him to nuke it from orbit. Werf it with flammen, etc. I can do without a few organs, but there are things I need to do and people I want to see again some day.
Marriage can be hard some years. And good other years. I think it's like the stock market - it's not timing, but time in that matters.
ReplyDeleteAnd what the heck are you doing with the cancer stuff? STAHP.
It's not cancer yet! It's preeeeee-cancer. I get bits scraped off me every few months to make sure it doesn't get any ideas. It's depressing, though.
ReplyDeleteThe marriage stuff has been better in the past couple months, since giving up on therapy.