Water/ free write #44

most of the earth is water.
most of our body is water.

i love being on, in , or near the water. the ocean most of all.the waves covering my feet in foam; or maybe hanging them over the edge of a sailboat; wind directing the course of things.
blue skies. blue waters.
a ripple of waves reflecting on the damp shoreline.

the ocean is a force to be reckoned with. 
i respect the ocean,even tho i love most to play in it.

free write #43/ Fabric

a love of fabric has been handed down to me from my mother.  She was always sewing something.  mending, she called it.

my favorite fabrics are cotton, denim and silks for painting. denim is my favorite to wear..my artist uniform.  cotton for cozy t shirts and batiking.

i love the thought of weaving fabrics, too. i think of muriel fisher then.  the last time i visited with her she was 87.

i keep drifting away from the cloth; drapey sensual charmuse or crepe de chine.

Free write #42/ Music

The Brandenberg Concerto

Listening to the wind instruments coming in with the strings in the Brandenberg movement #2.

i am remembering certain passages note for note.  so many sounds.  it sounds like the first time i'm hearing some of it.

wine and music and a pen and a friend to share it with: pretty neat.

i picture ladies in satin ruffles seated in the great hall, weeping into their handkerchiefs at certain intervals.

free write #41/masks

ironic that i am using a book on masks as a desk to write this on. the facts about masks are on the inside.

"to prepare a face to meet the faces that you meet"

I have a collection of masks, each with a history.

masks hide the real
and reveal the real.

i used to paint masks on shirts.  my favorite design was the richly carved masks. of two faces in one.
they were silver and shimmering pink on black with accents of lavender or turquoise.

free write 40/packages

All i can think of in terms of packages, is a poem that Roscoe used to recite on WNEW way back when.  It talked about some packages being hard to open.  "perhaps the gift is not for me".
packages can hold such wonder....art supplies for example.  contents you can create with are the best.  Most packages are welcome...some little gift to myself, occasionally.

Hair/ free write number 39

i always dreamed of having magazine hair.
i've been having a bad hair day since sometime in the 60's.
never had pantene commercial hair...long, thick, shiny with tons of body.
my own was almost always stringy and frizzed at the edges.

"look at that hair" my mother said when i'd traveled 3,000 miles to visit her.
imagine how bad my hair must've looked for those to be her first words.

i remember her twisting my hair into tight pincurls as a kid.  Later i rolled it on
soup cans to straighten it.

there's just not that much to say about hair.

Free write #38/ Coffee

java. elixir of the gods.  i brew a pot daily and share it with my free write partner most days.

so many secrets whispered over coffee; so many celebrations ending with that deep dark cup of joe.

sapphire rests her head on my wrist..my little editor.

i take mine black, no sugar.  slightly bitter.
iced coffee needs milk just to watch how
the white liquid navigates thru the ice cubes and merges with the coffee.

so many cups so little time to savor the aroma.  i sound like a folger's commercial.

expresso, with or without lemon is good too.

free write #37/ Mountains

i climbed tecate mountain the day the eagle snatched by father's eye.
i wrote that once back when words flowed more freely. not the struggle they are now,
like crossing the great mountains.
i gathered rose quartz at the base of cuchima.

hard to relate to mountains, being so far away from them now.  there's a different kind
of mountain here...made of steel and glass; severe.

ain't no mountain high enough to keep me from you.

the catskill mountains as a little kid.  mostly i remember being afraid to ride the cable cars.

i would welcome mountains these days.  magic is buried in their beginnings.

free write #36/ Computers

ode to the computer; that flat box that has it All.
the biggest library on every subject.
Lonely?  perhaps a chat room or an im with a stranger
about poetry or painting of music.
something just to pass the time when you're not playing
words or scrabble blast or chess.

i'm lost without a computer.  my life goes in crisis mode.
a true emergency.
the computer is a loyal companion for the most part.
more "there for you" than not.

Looking for romance?  typing with a seductive stranger
all night long can feel more real than a conversation with

someone you know.
even Sam loves the computer.

free write #35/ Thoughts

"thinking is the best way to travel"  (a line from a moody blues song, if i remember correctly).  its my first thought when thinking of thought as a subject to write about.

thought is what i put into a painting....another difficult subject.

"i think.
therefore i am"

thoughts come and go rapidly for me.   some forgotten before they ever make it to words.

"thinking of you" 

the thoughts dry up.

free write#34/beatles

One of the high points of my life was seeing the Beatles in person.   The first time was at the Steele Pier in Atlantic City (or was it Asbury Park?  i don't remember).i was 12.  Later on i saw them twice at Shea Stadium.

As a kid ringo was my favorite.  Later,of course, it was Lennon.

I grew up along with the Beatles.  Their music changed while i was changing.  i remember getting my first beatles album from my mom.  i played it over and over again.  i did the same with each new album.

Heard a kid on 86th street the other day saying to his friends. "i'll listen to anything but the Beatles"  silly kid.  he doesn't know what he's missing.

free write #33/ merry go rounds

i mostly remember the huge merry go round at steeplechase park with its camels and ostriches and lamas too, i think  i don't think any of horses were actually horses, but i'm not sure. there were those huge carriages you could sit in and watch the animal figures go up and down in a circle.  some were stationary.  huge, ornately carved pieces.  amazing craftsmanship i realized years later.
i would ride and ride reaching for those rings.  i don't think i ever got the gold.

my life sometimes was like a merry go round.
circling endlessly, going up and down and getting nowhere.
just along for the ride...without even the gold ring to try for.

the best part of riding the merry go round was jumping off while it was still spinning.

free write #32/Distance

i understand distance as a tangible thing having lived 3,000 miles away from the people i loved most for so long.

there are emotional distances, too, which may be worse than the physical ones.
nothing can be done.

the kitten lays on his back...he's come a long way...

distance are those lines on maps.
the creases eat entire cities
folded and unfolded a hundred times.

Fire/ free write #31

Song lyrics go thru my head:
ring of fire
i am the god of hell, fire
c'mon baby, light my fire.

i tried to paint fire in my phoenix piece.
hot and dancing, like good animation
flames tipped with blue.

there are warm, cozy fires crackling in the fireplace
and fierce, raging fires, eating everything in its path.

one has to have respect for fire.

free write #30/Cats

There are so many quotes about cats its hard to come up with something original.  i know a thing or two about cats, having had 30 + over my lifetime.  too many to mention by name.
i live with five of them now.  they are almost always fun.  Dark, delicate kholette;polydactal sam, cassie the fluff ball prone to prancing;sapphire the pretty little balinese; and rocky, the tuxedo kitten.
some cats are limber and sleek;other clumsey like poor sam.
why am i having so much trouble writing this?  its like trying to write about painting....too close, too much what i'm about.

free write 29/light and shadows

i love how light creates shadows
moving like tree limbs or people.
kinetic.

light is the thing i most want to master in painting.
it eludes me.  shadows i understand better.

black &; white photographs darkness and white light soaking a room.

afternoon sun enters thru the curtained windows.

Dolls and toys/freewrite # 28

one of my favorite toys were Colorforms...shiny plastic pieces that stuck to a shiny black board.  Many hours spent with that one.
i had a lot of dolls as a child...betsey wetsy, chatty kathy, thumbalina, raggedy ann and andy, patty playpal...a life sized doll...a must for an only child.
my last doll was barbie and i remember my mom sewing doll clothes from tiny scraps of fabric.  The store bought outfits were wonderful, too.  they came with accessories...shoes, a hat, a handbag.
another favorite toy was a metal gas station with a working lift and a ramp for little cars.  i was very young.
there was a ballerina doll the Christmas i was so sick.  She was jointed at the elbows, wrists, knees and ankles. dressed in an embellished leotard, her tu-tu was a soft pink as were the satin slippers.  You could pose her in all five positions.
Silly Putty, Play Dough, coloring books and drawing sets,construction paper and paste and scissors,crepe paper, chalk and blackboard, etch a sketch!!.

to this day a 64 count box of crayolas makes me smile.

freewrite #27/Mirrors

 what does a mirror reflect when there's no one there?  that was asked by a character in a erich maria remarque novel.  she was an inmate at an asylum.  funny i remembered that line.

shiny, sometimes beveled, sometimes like fun house mirrors where your images was suddenly long and narrow.

reflections, one's perception of things.

my mirrors are dirty.  i don't see too clearly anymore.  fortunately.

broken mirrors with the seven year curse.
compact mirrors like my mom had.
mirrors magnifying imperfections till you want to cry and avoid mirrors at all costs.

i love the mirrored bags from india and sri lanka.  richly embroidered and making rainbows when the light hits just right.

free write #26/ telephones

a scarcity these days, real telephones.

i had a light blue princess phone as a young girl.
first dates made over the trimline version that eventually replaced it.

getting a phone call was important in those days. i remember wanting the phone to ring so bad i would bargain with god.

no. 25/ blankets

i've had my brown toned blanket since 1973.  a gift from john horan.  its in good condition, except where the binding has frayed.  the checkerboard pattern is still rich in earth colors; bronze and rust outlined in black.

of course i think of  Navajo blankets;the designs hand woven over time

i think of new blankets in my closet...pretty but unused.

i treasure the aged yarns of my mother's afghans

and my old brown blanket.

reflections/free write #24

i love those mirror images
of trees reflected on a pond
the rippled bark shimmering.
the photograph preserving it.

reflections on glass are wonderful too.

windows collaged with refracted images.

free write # 23/movies

There was nothing like slipping into the darkness of an old movie theater. the smell of buttered popcorn and the matrons telling us to please get our feet off the seats.  someone saying shhhh  when we giggled too much.

my favorite movie of all time is The Wizard of Oz.  i love the color and the characters and the flying monkeys made me cry.

we'll always have paris.  great line from a great film.  an old man whispering rosebud, another favorite. orson wells was so appealing at that point in his life.  the Bridges of madison county. the wide open sky in thelma and louise.

there's a pattern here, i like those films that move me to tears.

a movie transports; transcends time.

glass/ free write #22

glass is another marvel to me. the entire process is fascinating.

clear and hard, solid and fragile
so many forms of glass; pink colored depression glass, cobalt blue bottles.

my mother and her mother before her collected cut glass crystal. hundreds of cuts producing rich, intricate patterns;
sharp edged and spectacular.  not to my taste tho.  i prefer sleeker more streamlined glass, like robbie's art glass pieces.

glass figurines lined up on a credenza; blown glass jars, vases,sugar bowls.

sound /free write #21

i hear the sound of traffic outside my window. an engine reeves up, a bike passes, a horn honks in the night.

my cat sam doesn't hear any sounds at all.  an occasional vibration will rouse him, but no sounds of cat food cans being opened or fresh turkey being unwrapped.

a plane passes overhead.  i hear the huge engines.  inside people are listening to music while a stewardess gives directions about flotation devices.

sound, one of the five senses we take for granted.

the camera/free write #20

I've always been intimidated by camera. set this. click here. Focus.  i have trouble with focus.
Film cameras were the scariest for me with their sets of rules i can never remember. (what does f stop mean again?  i always forget.) Digital cameras are a little more friendly.  point. shoot.  less stressful.
I've always been closest to people who are comfortable with their cameras.  tony tried repeatedly to teach me shutter speeds and finally found it easier to just take pictures of me instead of trying to teach me how to use it.
the camera captures a moment in time in an existence that is always changing.

scent / free write # 19

most people would call it an oder but i love the scent of tobacco, aged and sweet.  it makes me think of fire pits and the smell of wood burning brilliant and crackling, mixing with the cool night air. the ocean's fragrance rising up with the tide.  tobbaco is a gift to the old spirits.  i remember the smell of the pipe tobacco, woodsey and rich.
and oh the scent of fresh hung laundry, a mixture of clean air and perfumed soap. the greatest fragrance.

rocky's first birthday

no one ever thought we'd see this day, but it's rocky's first birthday. last november the vets predicted he would only live a few more weeks. Prayer, good energies and a bit of luck has combined to make this miracle.

the birthday boy enjoyed a full can of food for his birthday breakfast.  then he played.  afterwards he napped.

life is good.

free write #18/ lavender

i used to grow lavender in my garden in national city.  Long slender stalks of that wonderful blue purple color, still in the afternoon. I would cut and dry it and place it in  a vase on the glass table

la Von der, as milla would say. bunches of crushed lavender sewed into tiny pouches and placed in underwear drawers.

the fragrance of lavender makes me think of poety,penned in a fine hand script on browning calligraphy paper.

Photo courtesy of

http://www.theflowerexpert.com/content/giftflowers/flowersandfragrances/lavenders/" target="_blank">The Flower Expert.

windows/a free write

When i was a child one of my favorite things was looking in people's windows, especially in the village where i'd walk with my mother.  Those big windows in brownstone buildings were the best. You could glimpse over stuffed bookcases and paintings hanging on walls.  I knew i was home by those windows, open and inviting. it was a different world in 1960.

Later i walked alone thru various neighborhoods and glanced thru picture windows.

I love looking out windows,too.  i remember that hotel room in san diego, car lights climbing the hill.  or the french windows wide open..or the windows in the carriage house, stained glass and sealed shut.

i love the idea of being able to look in and look out the same surface of glass.

bridges

i drove over the brooklyn bridge in a dream
crossing over
connecting manhattan to brooklyn, population 4 million

slender cables cut across the sky.

free write #15/treasures

what treasures do i own?  my mom's diamond ring; my cats.  friends are treasured; memories, photographs.
those letters in boxes, some pots that judy made, my antique key collection.

i might live simply except for all my treasures; my books, my music, my boxes made of wood, porcelain, paper mache.  the unicorn box  - a gift from tony, circa 1977.

my oz stuff...those sculptures i made at 17, a bunny sewn in second grade.

treasures are the things you''ve had the longest.