Checking In - Updating - Life Intervals

Let me start with a quote from Alan Watts to help explain my long moment of silence.

“Music is a delight because of its rhythm and flow. Yet the moment you arrest the rhythm and prolong a note or chord beyond its time the rhythm is destroyed. Because life is likewise a flowing process, change and death are its necessary parts. To work for their exclusion is to work against life” – The Wisdom of Insecurity.

My voice has been arrested long enough. I started to feel that if I paused any longer I would lose my creative tempo. Nonetheless I needed a contemplative, perspective producing, sabbatical from writing and making art.

Clearly I’m not one of those people who will write in their blog daily or even often. My rhythm is slow and moves strangely with notes of discord. But I’d like to think I have more to follow than my rhythm, I also have sweet sounding and seductive melody that guides my movements.

(Aaaargh! I can’t concentrate! At this very moment my rhythm is totally being interrupted! The loud and abrasive noise of housemates chatting about how best to clean the kitchen and the eco-evils of plastic are distracting me. It’s hard to write and think abstract thoughts when people are talking loudly, cupboards are being slammed, dishes are clanking against each other, and water is being turned on and off.)

(I guess I could go sit in my room, on my bed, and write but I’m funny about my bed. I feel my bed should be reserved for two essential activities and writing is not one of them.)

I plan on writing more and more often once I have my art studio up and running. Right now it’s slowly being constructed on my few and far between free hours. I’m a very busy woman these days. Making art and writing about my life had to be placed on pause to make room for some of life’s other essential activities, namely:

Moving to San Francisco
Adopting a corporate career
Establishing a corporate identity
Securing a place to live in a junky gem house that is rent controlled
Cleaning out the house, garage, and yard
Finding housemates
Building a vegetable, herb, and flower garden
Reacquainting myself with old friends
Making new friends
Going to college classes at night to catch on some stuff
Learning to sing opera
Developing an obsession with motorcycles
Visiting my family
Helping my sister with her wedding
Spending weekends hiking in the Marin and Oakland hills
Backpacking into the Emigrant wilderness to gaze at the milky way
Exploring and practicing the teachings of living, dead, & local Buddhist teachers
Walking around the city (a lot)
Lap swimming in the evenings at the nearby gym
And, like I said, slowly building out another art studio for myself

Yes! My friends, I will be making art again soon – very soon. I seem to have kitty cats on my mind a lot these days and think I may start some homage paintings to our incredibly ancient and mystical feline friends. I’m also looking to fire up the old camera and start shooting the city. I think my series From The Street needs to be enacted in San Francisco. And lastly, I feel a strong urge to start making some videos. Winter is on its way and with the rains art will start to emerge from my new studio.

But on its own time, in its own way, with it own unique rhythm. (I bet the videos [moving pictures, in time intervals; and music-sound intervals] will highlight this point nicely).

Lastly, I want to thank everyone who got on my ass with a steady rhythmic beat of nagging urging me to start writing again. Without you the pause in my music might have become something like early hours experimental college radio show, unbearably annoying.

Sun Stroked

Just got back from fabulous Southern California. Ooooooh! It is so amazingly perfect there! Albeit, in a sort of grotesque way but who cares – really. Ok, by grotesque I mean it is oozing with oodles of wealth, waste, excess, and exploit. And by perfect I mean warm, dry, sunny, golden beaches, surf + surfers, year round gardens, cultivar-rich farmer’s markets, and laize-faire fashion.

Let me be more clear about where I was exactly. I just got back from Malibu: A misguided destination for many. A satvic zen land for some. And a confused hometown for a few. I was fortunate enough to grow up there and always love going back for a visit.

This time I had a wedding to attend to. Note: If you are ever invited to a wedding in Malibu don’t ever turn down the invitation. It’s guaranteed to be an extraordinary, beautiful, a lavish experience filled with strange and interesting characters. Funny enough this wedding turned out to be more like a high school reunion (a good one that is). The day after the wedding J.W. and I nursed our hangovers with a day long, sun drenched, do-nothing session at the beach. As you can see from the picture.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t in LA long enough to checkout any of the art. No worries, I’ll be back for another visit in less than a month and I’ll be sure to check out the scene then. In the meantime I’ll be doing my best to stay warm and productive on the East Coast.

Art, Wine, and The Street

I hit the street again today in hopes of capturing the last remnants of the season’s colors. Fall is happening so fast this year. Yesterday a big rain storm dropped a lot of leaves and then a wind storm blew it all away today.

Our wine has finished its primary fermentation and is now in a full malolactic phase as it sits in a carboy.

New Haven’s CWOS wrapped itself up today. It was definitely an exciting month for art. I met a lot of fabulous people and sold some work to boot. It was nice.

I’m off to LA next week for a wedding in Malibu. I think I’ll extend my stay in Cali and cruise up route 1 to pay a visit to a bunch of people in the Northland. I’ve been away from Santa Cruz, Oakland, Berkeley, and SF for too long. It’s time to check in.

I’m debating whether or not I should apply to grad school again. Is it really worth it? The whole endeavor seems like an expensive exercise in neurotic sycophantic desperation. Or at least that’s what I’ve observed here at Yale.

In The Mean Time

Sometimes (and those can be long stretches of time) I don’t feel like I have anything worth writing about. So I stop.

The truth is many things have happened since I last wrote. Like, showing my work From The Street at the John Slade Ely House over the summer. I also met several new and amazing people this summer. I took a lot of photos of homes (both inside and out) which I’m hoping I can turn into a show one day. I went to Wyoming this summer to visit Justin while he worked in Jackson Hole. I became a regular patron of the farmers market and have begun baking my own breads and cultivating my own yogurt. I moved to a new apartment (that would make this one move #12). I started feeding birds and then a stray cat and inadvertently a possum and a skunk. I went to work for a real estate broker then went to real estate school. I bought a bicycle for $25 and then summarily amassed a collection of 4 more bikes. I used one of my bikes to happily discover the beaches of West Haven. I ate less, exercised a lot, and lost weight. I kept a food journal, read books about the stock market, real estate, economics, and began buying clothes on-line. I started sitting in on an art/video class directed by Michel Auder at Yale’s art school. And truthfully, I procrastinated a lot.

Instead of feeling bad about all my dallying Justin encouraged me to see procrastination as an: “…effective and useful time management tool that helps enforce prioritization of tasks as well as ensuring a maximal and efficient use of ones energy.”

New Favorites

I just discover the radio station MUNT streaming out of New Zealand. Good stuff. Apparently they can say all sorts of naughty words on the radio over there.

Ever since I've been rejected from the American educational system I've been looking to NZ to solve all my life's problems. So far it's looking promising. Especially for my shutter bugging bent. If anyone wants to talk to me about any and all things New Zealand I would love to hear what you have to say.

Lately I've been feeling so domestic. It's such a strange satisfactory feeling to bake healthy oatmeal cookies, clean the apartment because it's Spring, and decorate the place with flower arrangements and framed photos.

Top 5 favorites of the week:

Visited the Cheese Nun's abbey and purchased some of her cheese.

Interviewed for a job.

Ate a falafel on the Yale campus lawn with Justin under the shade of a tree in the warm Spring sun.

Discovered a new radio station.

Met secret admirers of my From the Street project.

Down, Up, Down

Oh my gosh, I felt so low yesterday. I can't figure out exactly why other than my hormones shifting gears. I'm sure you know the feeling, no energy, no will, apathy & worry. It's the worst! The best I could manage to do for myself was down a bunch of vitamins and take walk in the park.

I must say it was beeee-uuuuu-eatiful yesterday. It is Spring and every one is out showing off their new babies while they stroll sidewalks of sunshine and flowers. Ok that's about as much positivity I can muster up right now.

Now that I think about it all my yucky, sickly, apathetic feelings probably have more to do with my circumstances than my hormones. Then again I think it's pretty hard to separate ones physiology from ones life. In short, I applied myself to slew of top art schools and was summarily rejected from everyone of them. It hurt. It hurt bad. Then my employer told me he's not sure how to work with me anymore because he feels the "vibe is all wrong". As in, and these are his words, "I just want to leave my wife and steal you away from Justin". Whoa!

All I could do to reassure him (and try to keep working until I found new employment) was to tell him he was tripping and that he needed to pull himself together. Probably not the most sage advise but it was all I could think of other than, "you're being a real jerk, cut it out! and get back to work".

Granted this isn't the first time he's said totally jerky, inappropriate things to me. I won't get into all his sleazy ways because it's actually pathetic and boring. I usually just ignore that sort of talk and keep plugging away at my work, but this time I guess he didn't want me to ignore him.

So..... I think it would probably be more accurate to say that dealing with art school rejection, loss of employment, a nasty cold that stuck around waaaay to long, and general hormonal ups and downs (as a woman is apt to experience) is a pretty sure way to feel miserable.

OK

I've decided to do a redo on most everything in my life (more on why, later). It's beginning with my website. www.seramac.net which is still under construction but you'll get the idea.

Essentially, I like ideas of economy. Economy of movement, economy of information, economy of pleasure. This is the where the redo stems from.

So to answer my last, and ancient post, the end came last Thursday and I'm now in the twilight of NEW, preparing for the beginning.

Recent movies: Videodrome, Salaam Bombay

Current Books: Art is Like Pizza, Stock Market Wizards, Art Speak, The Mirror of Art, Theories and Documents of Contemporary Art

Food: Fruit Leather