Mmmm… chillin’ on a balmy Wednesday eve…

It’s warm here tonight… the day was semi-sunny and positively balmy. “June gloom” seems to have come earlier these last few years, and so by the time June comes ’round, the gloom has mostly passed and it’s only slightly hazy ’til about midday. I’m glad I’m not back in the northeast this time of year, where the mosquitos could eat you alive over a period of a few weeks. That and the black flies, the higher up in the mountains or the further away from the city you went. Amazing how those little bugs could take such big chunks out of your tender parts, like around your ankles or the nape of your neck.

I’m sipping a lovely glass of Cab tonight, hailing from the 337 Wine Cellars winery from Lodi, which I purchased at World Market last Sunday… I couldn’t resist the promise of “hints of chocolate and berries” … it’s very good, too… glad I splurged, though when I open a bottle of wine it often turns before I am able to finish it, seeing that no one else in my household enjoys it much besides me.

My son graduated from elementary school today. I remember when I was done with sixth grade and heading into seventh. I’d spent the last six years in a Catholic school (back in Quebec in the ’70s, the school system was divided by religious affiliation, so there was the Catholic school board and the Protestant (non-denominational) school board). I was baptized Catholic, but my mother was Protestant, so when it came time to send me to the very big Catholic highschool, my parents balked and sent me to a much smaller, and slightly more local, Protestant school by virtue of my mom’s religious affiliation. Unfortunately, only about a handful of other parents of the kids in my graduating sixth grade class felt similarly, and we were a few very little fish released into a very big sea of already established relationships. I found that quite difficult (especially since most of the other refugees were boys). It took me several years to feel comfortable with the new group of people, and I never really quite fit in.

My teenage years were awkward times, and though many think back fondly to those days, I personally do not. I was not particularly outgoing, nor did I excel in sports… or academics. I was very middle of the road, really, and looked rather unremarkable, too. Not unattractive… nor particularly pretty… pretty average, would be a good way to put it. Art was where my heart was, even then, and I would spend as much time in the art room as I could. Besides art, and reading, boys were what occupied what was left of my imagination. I’d get a crush and it would go nowhere and I’d be crushed, and then the whole process would start over again with a different boy. My parents were so strict that they never allowed me to date. The first time I even went out with a boy was in 10th grade, with a boy who invited me to his graduation prom. Oh and how shocking it was to our parents… he was black, and I was white, and neither my dad (nor his grandmother) liked the idea of us going to the prom together, but we did, and we weren’t the worse for wear. He was a handsome devil, too, though nothing much came of us after the party was over (indeed, nothing much happened before; we were merely friends). I had news about him not all that long ago… he’s an accountant at a firm in New York City. It’s odd when I hear snippets about people I knew back then. It seems so long ago, and yet the memories are still floating along the top of my consciousness… my feelings of awkwardness and self-consciousness and yearning just as acute in my recollection as they were then.

I marvel at the passage of time, so fluid in a way, and yet I can’t imagine how different I’ll be, that life will be, in another twenty years… or another forty (should I live that long). I hope so, with all faculties and my health intact, give or take a few aches and pains. At the moment it seems all about toil… working my days away and not a whole lot of enjoyment at the end of it. Weekends hold promise, but I’m usually so exhausted that I feel like a steamed zucchini… wet, soggy, relatively tasteless, too.

More books have arrived from Amazon (my admitted addiction)… Sybil MacBeth’s Praying in Color: Drawing a New Path to God… Karla M. Kincannon’s Creativity and Divine Surprise: Finding the Place of Your Resurrection… Richard Gordon’s Quantum Touch: The Power to Heal… and Lark Books’ 500 Handmade Books: Inspiring Interpretations of a Timeless Form. All now neatly stacked in a pile on my desk, awaiting further perusal.

I’m about to head over to the table to work on the last two color postcards I’ve still got to make… last month’s (which should have been mailed out at the beginning of this one)… it’s been slow going with these… always the last few that straggle along and hold up the others that are already completed. I really need to make art for myself… for the sake of my own need and desire to create, as opposed to creating it for others, which is mostly what I do. Someday I hope to sell my work, but I’ll never get there from here if I keep giving it away, and what little time I have to invest is usually spent on creating projects that do not work toward my long term goals. But at least it gets me to the table and has me putting down marks of color onto paper, which if I didn’t have this incentive would probably not occur with any sort of regularity otherwise. Discipline has never been my strong suit, I’m afraid, though I keep trying and working on it. Perhaps in the next twenty years I’ll have it figured out.

Blessings and wishes for a lovely summer solstice, no matter where you are…
Adriane

Glittery goodness…

All that glitters is not gold, so the song says, but the sparkling stuffs never cease to give me warm fuzzies and make my heart skip a beat.

Let me elucidate…

As a youngster, I’d follow my mom around during her forays into fabric stores. My favorite one was Marshall’s Fabrics on Ste-Catherine Street in the heart of downtown Montreal, which was a several story shop filled with all kinds of head-reeling fabric splendor. My mom sewed a fair amount, and she would purchase cuts of fine fabrics and make her own designer dresses. Back in the “old country” she and her sister Irene had their own dressmaking shop… she’s designed and sewn clothes for the likes of wealthy Hungarian society women as well as Russian officers’ wives, and everything in between.

In any case, the purpose of the visit to the fabric store was for my mom to find wonderful fabrics at a reduced price. So through the store she’d go, ambling from floor to floor, up and down the aisles amongst the bolts of fabrics, with me trailing behind her with both hands out, my fingers languidly rubbing the fabrics between my fingers as I passed. My favorites were the ones made from natural fibers… cottons, linens, silks, wools, or even a combination of these, but I didn’t like how the synthetics felt when the fibers were rubbed against each other. However, what finally pulled me out of the tactile tour was the floor that had all of the bolts of fabric destined for evening wear… sequined, bugle beaded, gold and silver embroidered laces of all colors… my eyes would gleam as brightly.

Of course my mom didn’t like most of these, as her taste and style were of a more conservative, tailored variety. She’d gaze down at my soulful expression with a mixture of disdain and amusement, and tell me that the black with the gold and silver embroidery reminded her of coffin linings and brought to mind not elegance but mourning. But still, I was nonplussed. Nothing could sway me from the sparkles that entered through my eyes and illuminated my insides… my imagination.

Now I am a bit more subtle while in pursuit of my glittery penchant… I opt for interference colors and metallic leafs instead of glitter glue, but I have my share of powdered glitters that I picked up at the craft store simply because I couldn’t resist their sparkling charms… and as I gaze intently at the contents within, I shift back into my childhood self and remember the glow…