P o c k e t CT

The other night I had a dream that I was with a bunch of friends on the side of New Salem Rd. I don’t know if we were having a roadside party or walking around but I had a feeling of general good times. Then in a cluster was an animal that was wounded somehow (hit by car?) The poor thing was quite obviously mortally injured. My friends however, were attempting to put it out of its misery by poking it with a stick you could roast marshmallows on. I think with palpable resentment “you useless fucking people” and go to get a big rock.

Yesterday my sisters and I are discussing a “what if” scenario one of the nurses and the social worker thought we may want to think about ahead of time. This is a grim possibility exactly on the tail of other information that was markedly hopeful. There has been now months of this rollercoaster. One doctor will say that mom has “not a slim but a good chance of getting off the vent” and the next day a nurse will ask my sister how long we intend to put her through this, implying that the doctors will not cease in experimenting with this or that to see if she can snap out of the myriad of post surgery complications she has. It seems that every week I am fluctuating between the imminent likelihood of losing my mom to bucking up for a long recovery for her. Of course what I want is absolutely impossible for the hospital staff to give me. That would be a clear direction of recovery or not, an immutable prognosis, a pass to get the hell off this rollercoaster of hope and dread.

So now during this discussion my father expresses his wishes that we be more inclusive of my brother in the discussions. My brother is difficult to talk with for a number of reasons. The task is like walking across an emotional minefield. My sisters both take a step back in the virtual like up of volunteering for this endeavor and look at me like I stepped forward. “Fine” I say and go to find my cell phone.

The conversation which happened about two hours later was simply awful. At the end of it I remembered my dream from the night before. Although I am completely capable of dissociating to do these stupendously nasty things, I am not feeling fabulous about it. After, I am a mess and a half.

This reminds me of the time I had to give Rebekah’s sister the Heimlich Maneuver at Fitzwillys. Marjorie was talking enthusiastically and eating. I think this was a dinner after a performance of Julius Ceaser we were all in and we were quite exuberant. Marjorie starts waving her arms and putting her hand up to her throat. It takes a few seconds for people at her end of the table to realize what she is saying. Oh Marjorie is choking, wait Marjorie is choking!! I catch a clue what it going on as Rebekah starts screaming for a waitress. “My sister is choking. My sister is CHOKING!!!.” I stand, calmly say “Rebekah! Shut up, I can do this.” I walk over to behind Marj, put my hands in the right place. My mind is hearing the instructor clearly “you need to use enough force on the diaphragm to expel the object, sometimes you will break a rib” and I pull hard. Thankfully not hard enough to get the ribs cracking. A cheese stick flies across the table, Marjorie’s color returns in seconds and she is seated and finishing her sentence like nothing happened. Chatter chatter chatter. At this point I am shaking uncontrollably and did so for an hour or more. I was inconsolable. Everyone remembers the jubilation of the cheese stick flying across the table; I only remember how ghastly it felt after. And I want to say please don’t ever make me have to do that again.

Sunday on the way to the hospital to visit mom I saw flowers. Outside. It looked like a forsythia bush budding out in glory yellow. I must be hallucinating. Although I have seen the telltale tubes and buckets adorning our maple trees, this seemed too good to be true. Flowers before I have spotted my first snowdrop stem or crocus? I must be seeing things.

I got bit by a mosquito that night. Around Wendell there are impromptu streams emerging and the ground is showing its warm spots to us. On North Leverett Road the pussy willow trees are showing off their furry buds that seem to gather and dole out sunlight just for my sore overwintered eyes.

Overwintered is entirely how I feel right now. The harshness of these last few months has left me feeling fragile, almost brittle. Another tap of a hammer and I can disassemble into pointy shards. I almost look forward to it, like the last breaking snap of the ice melting so the sun can warm the water to a welcoming solace. It will all happen with the right amount of time. Spring starts Thursday whether there is mud or ice on the ground and soon there will be many more flowers.

In the meantime I have much to distract me. Rebekah sent me chocolate bars with sea salt in them which are strange and lovely, a hand painted card that reminds me that the sun loves me (handily shrink wrapped as it wasn’t dry) and best a decorated envelope that took me away from a worried head and made me laugh.

Saturday night the contra dance was full of almost all the people I adore dancing with. One dance had me switching genders so frequently and unexpectedly I know longer knew where or who I was. Empty headed I would continue on in a direction until magically, I was spinning someone or they me. Then he would flip it again and I would be trying to spin him with the same decisive grace he uses on me, but failing and laughing all the while. There is a kinetic meditation in dancing to oblivious confusion. It is mostly achieved by someone spinning me fast or for long enough to get lost in it. It is something lately I crave for the escape and rest it gives my wintered head.

I just finished my first sweater! What I didn’t know is that I knit really loose and should have made it even smaller than the XS size. I may make it again so that it fits better. I won’t rip this out but will give it to someone who will love it appropriately and fit well. If you are interested in being that person let me know, but you won’t get it until the new one is finished so don’t hold your breath.

Here is what I call the BC Hat. I made up the pattern, made the first one for JoeTAH. That got lost in Peru and JoeTAH is pretty mad at whoever has it. I made the second one when I had to rip out the beginning of the body of the tubey for the third time – so that I could do something that would come out right nice and be easy. It was named the BC Hat as the person who got the hat wore it over the baseball cap – or it could be for another reason that can be abbreviated that way. Either way I am making the replacement cap for JoeTAH and here is how you do it.

Takes one ball Noro Kureyon and size 8 circular needles.
Cast on 81, 90 or 99 depending on how loose you knit and how big you want the hat.
12 rows K6 P3
10 rows P6 K3
8 rows K6 P3
6 rows P6 K3
4 rows K6 P3
2 rows P6 K3
Switch to double pointed needles when it gets too small for the circular
1 row K7 k2tog
1 row k
1 row k6 k2tog
1 row k
1 row K5 k2tog
1 row k
1 row k4 k2tog
1 row k
1 row K2 k2tog
1 row k
1 row k2 k2tog
1 row k
1 row K1 k2tog
1 row k2tog
tie off

I suggest you make this for someone wonderful (or someone who was kindly serving only one purpose in your life, because anything else would have been a total disaster)

Naked Ladies is happening again! I can feel the intrigue of the title for this innocuous art guild grabbing your attention. Now that I have it, I will try to let you down slowly. The title for the group came years ago when we met to draw at the house of George and Wanda. We would pitch in to pay for a model and figure draw. It was a comfortable setting with music, light chatting and a break for tea and cookies. We drew together for about every week seven years. I was first invited to the group when I had been living in Wendell for a few months. These were some pretty lonely months. The cozy little house I lived in was at the bottom of a seven hundred foot treacherous driveway and my friends wouldn’t make the trek all winter long. Couple that with a long commute, an aloof and taciturn boyfriend and I was starved for a social scene.

Saving me for unbearable boredom, Donna mentioned they are accepting some new blood in her drawing group. I hadn’t drawn since college but liked it the figure drawing best. From this one off hand invitation sprang the opportunity to get to know some of the people I love the most in this world.

Years later Wanda would call in the sweet Polish accent explaining that “naked ladies wouldn’t happen tonight because the driveway is terrible” and the name stuck. For a while we didn’t have models and switched to a monthly challenge where one person would create an assignment and you would have a month to complete it. The assignments ranged from specific materials to use, a color choice, or to themes from poetry or songs. The results varied from a performance throwing the required to use supplies in a specially dented trash can, quick done the night it is due paintings to well worked gorgeousness. The nice part was that we all kept meeting and finished work, something as a sketch addict I wasn’t used to. We did this for a good while, tried to start drawing again and then stopped meeting for a year or so. I missed everyone like crazy. But now we are meeting again. Hooray!

Last night Donna was complaining that artistically she is blocked. I conveyed to her a thing I read a while ago that was for writers block. The cure is to write porn for a while. Basically the idea is to write something that you can just throw away after. If you have no intention of ever publishing the paragraphs detailing the ripped bodice and throbbing manhood you can enjoy the freedom of writing and break out of the block. So how can you transfer this on to painting? Should Donna paint people in the thick of it? Should she look for models for blatant crotch shots or men who wouldn’t mind holding an erection while keeping still for a while. Should she use skin mags as fodder for drawings? Somehow this seemed like it wouldn’t break through the wall of nonproduction that seemed to be the size of the wall of China. What would be porn, easy to make fun, get the juice flowing, who cares about it later drawing… for Donna? The answer – Monsters. Easy, limitless, cute, scary, ugly, funny, meaningless or meaningful monsters. I assigned her 50 and then I said I will even so them with you. Then George said he would too, Wanda might.

Want to join in?

Maybe we can make a big book of monsters.