Greetings from the beach. My beach book this summer is Mike Lupica's The Big Field - a book targeted at teenage boys. I, however, love those kinds of sports books and I enjoy Lupica. He was one of my favorite sports writers back in the day when he wrote for the NY Post (the only good thing about the Post).

I played baseball and softball when I was young. In high school (maybe it was junior high) we had some softball for girls but by then I wasn't much of a team player or popular so didn't play much. In my twenties I played one season for a corporate league and would have been picked for MVP (so I was told) except that I didn't actually work for the company. The next year they cracked down on ringers like me and required that players actually worked for the company they were representing. That was OK by me because I wasn't interested in the corporate world or team playing. I still loved the game and loved watching but was OK with not playing.

As a teenager it was the Jewish Community Center that saved my life. First, it gave me access to a wonderful pool where I could swim my laps. There was nothing so calming or good in my life as swimming laps: stroke, breathe, flutter kick. Nothing to gain but the end of the pool, turn around and come back. I took some classes. I even took lifesaving although I never got the certificate because I could never find the cinder block on the bottom of the pool. Still I learned basic lifesaving skills and would know what to do if someone was drowning, unless of course you were at the bottom looking like a cinderblock.

So in New York when I stopped playing softball I joined the YWCA at 50th and Lex. I swam three days a week on my lunch hour until I moved to New Mexico where I took up fishing and hiking. I gave up fishing but continued with hiking until I hit my fifties. In Albany I joined the Jewish Community Center and swam. So my favorite activities for myself were swimming and hiking - solitary activities. I know, you're not supposed to hike alone but I've never been so good with rules. I did spend several summers with the Appalachian Trail crew building pontoon bridges, stone staircases and relocating trails. That was a team activity but only lasted one week per summer.

The closest I came to a team sport was boxing. I took it up in my fifties. Boxing a team sport? I always had a partner who pushed me and who I pushed to do our best, strongest workouts. There was a crew of four of us who became good friends. (We still are even though I live 1,000 miles away. We have a bond borne of teamwork.

Maybe I'm getting better and can do team sports now - except my favorite exercise is still swimming. I do play golf so I have a few friends I golf with once in awhile - otherwise I go it alone.

Team player? Still, not so much. However, progress not perfection. I spend time with my partner, with my friends and can open up a little more than I once did. And it's all OK. I am who I am.

On Writing and Painting

I published my blog and I painted Monday just like I said I would. Later in the afternoon I took myself around the golf course. I find that golf relaxes me, makes me feel at one with the universe even when I'm not playing well, which I wasn't. The walking, the breeze in my face and the concentration on the ball all contribute to my sense of well being. Life is grand!

Did all this inspire me to look at one of my manuscripts? Not really although I have started sifting through one of my notebooks relevant to my latest work in progress. Who knows, maybe I'll actually finish this one.

Who knows? Start, stop, start, stop, finally abandon the project by putting it away. The fear of writing relates to something my friend Bill said the other day. "I can hear your voice when I read your writing." So I'm sharing myself in a way that I can't go back and deny. When I paint I leave the interpretation up to the viewer. When I write I have a harder time leaving it to my reader because I have exposed myself on the page. Even publishing this little blog which was supposed to be about my painting often leaves me drained. So I share my latest painting with you and leave it to you and my writing, once I hit publish I have no choice really but to leave it to you.

I've always thought that it was quite amazing that I turned out to be like my mother, with her love of strong tea, all things English and her strong political views. But in looking back I see more superficial similarities to my mother and more deep-seated similarities to my father.

My mother operated from her left brain mostly. She was good at math, She kept facts in her head supporting her views and opinions. She was very practical, pragmatic and terribly efficient.  She turned a windfall into a lifeline that made her senior years quite comfortable.  I share none of those attributes.

My father on the other hand lived by the seat of his pants. Money floated away in vats full of booze. When he wasn't drinking it away he was busy recovering his losses. After he and mom split up he only ever managed to live very sparsely. I'm like that with money - comes and goes - mostly goes. I don't live sparsely. I live with Carol in a beautiful 1600 square foot condo in what is almost paradise but if I were alone it would be quite a different story.

I remember being with my father on Saturday afternoons listening to the live broadcasts from the Metropolitan Opera. He had a grey, metal typewriter table with an old Underwood ensconced in the middle and unfinished manuscript on the sides of the table, on the floor, anywhere on his side of the room. I'm not so different. I have two unfinished manuscripts lying around my house and copious notes in notebooks and file cards that could make up a third manuscript if I would convert those notes into a manuscript.

What is the lesson here? That I fail because I haven't tried to put the finishing touches on them. Well, to be fair to myself, I had sent the first book out and was rejected but got some encouraging feedback. The failure of mine was that I wasn't willing to do the work to publish the book. And my second book? I look at it in a folder under my desk everyday.

So what is my next step? Think I'll paint after I publish this blog.

I've been painting up a storm, actually an activity more important to me than writing up a storm. My friend Bill writes a blog and he says "Write everyday." Well, I do, but I don't blog everyday. So much of what comes through my pen is self-centered hash. I like to think I'll be able to paint everyday. I don't because I often need a day to do just about nothing and then a day to paint. This week I got that and painted.

It's funny how I can paint all day and come up with nothing. Sometimes I do come up with something that is acceptable. A couple of days ago I worked on my Lake Geneva painting and that was all. It's OK. And yesterday I painted all day; worked on various paintings and my "At the Close of the Day" was the only one that is acceptable. (It hasn't come up to my ideal of what I wanted but I'm closer than I've been). The rest of my work I label experimental.

I like experimental. I can do anything and justify it's existence and my work by saying "it was an experiment" glossing over the facts that maybe I'm not inspired today, or not on my game or really that I'm afraid to try to say what it is I really want to.

Sometimes of course I try for what I want and fail. So my lesson for myself is to try again; do research; talk to people; read; go to an art show; practice to perfect my technique. Practice, practice, practice. When one avenue is blocked do I just go home or do I look for another route.

Our friend Ellen died yesterday morning. It was peaceful, she was in no pain and she was not alone. We, in our little group, have been grappling with this. All day I looked at pictures and postings from her friends, her students, colleagues, and finally had to shut my computer down. Our group has communicated with each other but still I find for myself at least, the pervading confusion and emptiness. "What just happened?" It's not that her death was sudden. We all knew it was coming. We all prepared; we wrote her notes; Nancy went out to be with her. In short, we knew she was leaving us. But still the confusion and emptiness remain.

When you're a cog in a wheel you rely on each other to keep going. But what if you're the wheel? I've always thought of Ellen as the wheel. The one that kept us moving toward each other and yet separate; the one whose life we revolved around, kind of like the planets revolving around the sun. We are here; we are entities with our own lives but we've been brought together by our sun. The sun, of course is a star and a star loses light and heat as time goes by. And we've seen her getting weaker as days went on and now that our sun has faded where do we turn?

We turn, of course, to each other and savor the sun that we had and forge through with the sunlight she imparted to each of us.

And so to Ellen, "au revoir" and "merci". Be seeing you.

On Becoming a Woman

I've just finished Toni Morrison's The Bluest Eye. It was tough going, partly because of her inventive use of form but because, although I sometimes had a hard time following the thread of the story, I had no problem following the theme of hardship and tragedy brought about by oppression and the consequent self-oppression. I guess I wasn't prepared for the stark cruelty and tragedy of the ending but I should have been. Where else could it have gone? Self-deception and madness.

Morrison wrote this in the sixties when we were just waking up to the horrors of bigotry and that eye-opener pushed many of us toward Civil Right and then for me, Women's Rights and Gay/Lesbian rights. The sixties and seventies were exciting times. We were changing the world. And we did to some extent. Many of our children and grandchildren don't face the barriers we faced.(Of course, another group faces those barriers which we make legal by pegging groups, illegals, threats to our society, to the American way.

My nephews fight those fights. Me,  I am just catching up to myself as a woman. There are countless women like me who grew up in the sixties weighted down by self-oppression, self-hatred for being who we were. Be proud, demonstrate, dance in the streets and I did all those outward things that helped change society. It's the individual struggle that takes place and keeps many of us in the same place. The Pecolas of the world (the main character in The Bluest Eye) go to extremes of self-deception to avoid self-loathing. It was her only way to avoid self-loathing. If she had blue eyes she wouldn't be ugly. She believes herself ugly because everyone else does in a world where blue eyes, blonde hair and white skin are held in the highest esteem.

It's no accident that I identify with Pecola. When I was a kid I renamed .myself Tom. I lived in the fantasy of being a boy because everyone knew girls were silly, stupid and vulnerable to the whims of boys (i.e. powerless). I eventually gave up the dream of being a boy and reconciled myself to my fate - that of a girl, albeit with bad grace. I became introverted and mostly stayed away from having girlfriends. As an adult I realized that I was a lesbian and so worked on behalf of lesbian/gay rights.  And the friends I made then and until recently have mostly been men. What a surprise! I've always been more comfortable with men and especially gay men. This way I avoid the big issues of how I see myself as a woman.

I'm only just coming into being comfortable as a woman and it has taken me all these years to realize I am one of the strong woman. It has been my re-acquaintance with my "tribe" - the women I knew as girls in high school. I can see and celebrate our "culture" - the glue that keeps us together which celebrates our likenesses as well as our differences.

It's since our reconnection through Facebook that I've come into my own as an artist. It's not just their encouragement and support (for which I am grateful) that has helped me so much in this area, but it is through them, remembering where I come from, were we come from and how far we have come as women that I take my rightful and proud place in the universe among these women.

I've been feeling sorry for myself because I haven't healed quickly enough from my cataract surgery. So after having a little pity party today I went to my studio and started the second series in my studies of the Rock River at flood.

The green on the trees is a little fanciful - those of you who were there in april remember that it had only just stopped snowing so there wasn't too much in the way of green leaves yet. Still...more to come.

I finished a small paint - 6x4 that was really just an exercise in painting autumn trees and their reflections. It's the only work I've done over the past week except of course for writing and fretting about working. Such a waste of time - fretting but it has let me know that my "inner terrorist" has shown up again. You know, the guy/gal that tells me I'm inadequate, that I'll never be any good, it's too late anyway, so why bother?"

He's the guy that lives in my head. He can be dormant for months and then suddenly, or maybe not suddenly but subtly, appears, rears his ugly head and before I know it I'm in the midst of negativity.

The question is how to move the terrorist out. I tell him to shut up and move out. I tell him he has no idea what he's talking about and I can say I'm the artist here, you are just a bogeyman. Get the hell out of my head!"

It looks like my plans for a two day watercolor class in the middle of June might come to naught. The reason is that we ran out of money once we paid our monthly bills and put groceries in the house. The end of the month is small paychecks with large bills (you know, like the rent). I'm trying to take the positive out of this. We went to an art show on Saturday at Brookgreen Gardens. There were plenty of visual artists who knew how to draw and paint representational scenes. The problem for me was that they all looked alike.= except one guy named Dave.  He put on show a few watercolors (mostly he showed in oils which were geared toward selling) which were lovely. And were not the run of the mill scenes of Charleston or Pauley's Island. They spoke to me. I enjoyed talking with him; he offered to take a look at some of my work; and he may hold a class in the fall. So maybe I'll save for that one.
So back to painting.