...it all makes sense now

growing up my mother was very taken with a painting by Edward Hopper. the title was "rooms by the sea"

i will admit when i was younger i didn't see the fascination for the painting, in fact i found it to be disturbing in a non threatening way. why is the ocean right outside the door? why does it look like there is nothing alive in this space? our public library had a program at the time where you could borrow framed pieces for your wall for a nominal fee. i think "rooms by the sea" spent more time on our living room wall than it did anywhere else. mom was so taken with the picture that my dad had a copy of it painted on canvas and framed for her for christmas one year. when mom died she left the painting to my brother.

 mom's been gone nine years now and i bought her house from her estate because i needed a home. right away i changed things so it wouldn't look like my mother's house. nothing huge because i was not a handy person and did not have the money being newly divorced but still i changed enough.

fast forward to a couple of weeks ago-my son and i were shopping together and he wandered over to the poster section.when i found him he was carrying this large print of "rooms by the sea". i was surprised by it. he told me we had to buy it because it belonged in the living room. you see it had always hung in the living room of nan's house and he loved the painting. he couldn't tell me why he liked it he just did and he really wanted me to buy it.

so i did. and it is hanging in the living room and it looks perfect. in fact it looks like i painted the living room just for that picture. now when i look at the piece i see a calm, quiet room with warm sunshine spilling in. i can imagine curling up on the red couch in the sun reading a book with the ocean outside my window to keep my company. it's a good place and i think now i understand why it spoke to her.

august

august has a feeling all its own. it's not june with all the promise of endless summer and its not july with picnics and celebrations. august is hot and humid and just there. you look at august and can see the start of another school year on the same calender page. when it's august you are getting tired of watering the flowers and picking tomatoes and eating sweet corn has lost its special treat appeal. you know what's really depressing about august? the stores have halloween candy on the shelves already.......

if you could turn back time.....

if you could go back to one moment in your life and change it what would it be? you could go back and relive three weeks of your life- 21 days- would you change anything? would your life be only slightly different or monumentally so? and finally when you come back would you choose to remember the events? free will can make for some pretty interesting life paths. so would you?

and once again we crash

mother nature has a sense of humor- it's called iowa- only i am not laughing. we endured a particularly nasty winter. spring will come and this will be a bad memory was our mantra to get us through it. and arrive spring did- for about two weeks. now we are back to cold, wind, rain and overcast skies. thanks mom. seriously- i don't think my mental health can take much more of it.

it's a roller coaster ride and you can't get off

the funny thing about depression is the highs and lows.it's been a pretty good few days for me. life isn't so gray and i've been able to really focus on some pretty good stuff. the meds are supposed to even things out but some times meds just can't block certain things. like the calander from moving forward and move it has because i looked at it and saw that tomorrow is April 16th and nine years ago i sat in the doctors office with my mother and heard him tell her she had cancer and they didn't know where it orginated from. three months later she was dead.

can we stop now? i'd like to get off...

rhymes with orange

nothing rhymes with orange- that's why orange is such a weird word. it doesn't know where it fits in. it's a color it's a flavor it's a fruit. and you can't make up a silly song that rhymes with it and it's hard to use in poetry. if i say i am feeling blue or everything is rosy you know what i mean. i can feel peachy and there is the apple of my eye. there is black comedy and everyone wants to go green. brown rhymes with a lot of words and everyone wants to be in the pink but not thought of as yellow. but orange? today I feel like orange... 'nuff said.

dark days

I have a student who is pretty cool. He's different and a bit of a misfit but then I find that most of my art students are like that. I'm a misfit too! One day he wandered into the studio and I asked how hios day was going. He sat down and said I'm having a dark day. All I want to do it talk. So we did. I totally understand a 'dark day'. And it seems that depresison and being creative are connected. Talking helps when I am feeling dark.