August 17, 2020
Late June 2020, Hamilton
…I discover the pleasure of wearing wet pants and t-shirt fresh from the washing machine – this gives me a good twenty minutes more of clarity of mind and focus. The constant burr of fans and the roar of the one window a/c unit is on a par with the scream and clunk of muscle cars and heavy trucks outside, but I’m more than happy to share my space with the inside machines, if they keep the air cool, and moving.
Grateful for drapes on the windows, for the plant mister I use regularly on my face and neck, grateful for the water I drink gallons of, bathe in, get drenched by in the rain that sizzles on the hot pavement, soaks the heatwave air and makes the world smell of green growth.
..an enormous amount of dumb, brute effort, just to maintain the smallest amount of momentum. It’s so easy to sink into the dystopian news cycles, to get despairingly, ragingly, heavily lost in all the ugly being exposed in our systems, in each other, in myself … which of course only compounds the effort required to get moving again, since now I’m running through and with extreme emotional heaviness, too.
Yes, it’s important to not look away from the ugly. But to do so knowing There’s green and good in the world, Mister Frodo.
Mid July, 2020, The Shore Cabin
It’s all green and good here, save for what looks like toxic bubbles on the surface of the lake, the day after a big rain. Oh, and Jet Skis.
Losing things, then finding them again just where I left them, and where I’d just looked. Often I have to ask: May I have my water bottle back now please? and then there it is, useful to me again. Reading Graeber on Debt, which is really a history and examination of slavery. Much appreciated, David. We really do need to understand the connections between economics and racism, slavery, and the misuse of people for gain.
I go to the lake several times a day for lessons in water behaviour. I’m reading the science (oddly spare and sidelined – apparently difficult to get funding for this. I’m thinking I know why…) I’m one of the lucky ones who can hear what the lake is saying, but it’s a process and boy, do I have a lot to learn. She’s happy to teach me, and always we finish with a long swim.
I learn I have exactly the right amount of fat on my body to float on the still lake without effort of any kind, eyes stretched up to watch the osprey, the swallows, the piping plover that just peeped its way northward. Sometimes an eagle, though not since the osprey.
New languages: Swan, water, wind, squirrel, Hathor: El, Ka, Leem, Om. I understand more every day & the drawing helps.
Early August 2020, Hamilton
…Not one cloud in all the soft, pale blue. Not much traffic either, on this Friday morning, sun-washed street. Dads and daughters walk home on the shaded side, dogs of all sizes and shapes on the other, toward Gage Park. They are reflected in the large front window of the house across the way. Here’s a pack of six sun-kissed, golden-white dogs drawn south toward grass, laughter, squirrels, bicycles, roses.
I love the parade of Gage Park roses, too. Each bloom a miracle of scent, each a unique transmission of shape that nods to the earth or gazes up into treetops, faces. Look what I have become! See how I am the sound of palest violet, of warm sunrise apricot, rich beating heart red. See how I have loved this world with my Self, opened wide and singing.
August 17, Owen Sound, at my favourite breakfast joint (Hooray!), my yellow mask handy.
The plan for my 3 year residency was always this: to spend the first year in experimentation (done), the second in development (had a great plan in January which took 3 months to CoVid-revise, started development late May) and the third a launch of the new work, in whatever format and vehicle I devise in the late second/ early third year.
I’m on track. This new work is really really exciting. I’m going to launch in pieces late fall with some teasers before then when I get a chance. There will definitely be ways you can participate and get involved. Do stay tuned.
My apartment in Hamilton is sublet until October, so I can concentrate on this work with water at my cabin, and bring the source material & sketches I gather there into the studio in Hamilton. There’s hardly any wifi signal at the shore, so my blogging schedule here has been difficult to maintain. I miss it! Will be very happy to get back into the regular ritual in October.
Along with the photography, video and drawing, the writing has grown in some intriguing directions…
I developed an allergy to making masks, but am on the mend from this. None in stock at the moment, but I do have 100 or so new ones in the pipe. If you’d like one, send me a note.
In the meantime, I’m happy to report that there’s an abundance of green and good in the world.
All my love to you.