pen and brush

September is turning up as a productive time. For my one-a-days, somewhat in imitation of Agnes Martin's grids, I started doing these close-spaced lines with some open spaces. 

each 4 inches x 6 inches (10cm x 15cm)
fountain pen, acrylic ink

I liked these, so I made one in a larger format. I think this may work up into something although the background needs to be more solid. It strobes in real life.  

Flood Plains
10 x 14 inches (25cm x 35.5cm)
acrylic ink, Tombow pen

I've been pushing on with ink paintings. I think this is a painting. 

Of course I like it better upside down. Maybe I should stand on my head when I paint.

This is almost a painting. I think it wants something more on the right side, or something not so vertical or --gasp!-- a bit of a color that isn't black or white. (It's still taped to the easel, ignore the particolored edges.)

Surprisingly, this is no better upside down.

I think I'm getting over my compulsion to fill the entire space. Some time away from the project has been a good thing.

IX XI MMI

On Tuesday, September 11, 2001, at an uncharacteristically early hour for me, I went to the Amtrak station in New Rochelle and got on a train headed for Washington D.C. where I expected to spend a couple of days taking in the sights. The train sat for a while in Penn Station and then headed south. As it passed the tip of Manhattan, I happened to look out the window, saw a dark ring of something around some upper floors of the World Trade Center, and said to the friend I was traveling with, "I think the World Trade Center is on fire." Things got greatly worse from there. We were all put off the train in Pennsylvania. My friend and I stayed overnight and came home again the next day, and passed the plume of smoke that marked where the towers had been.

On Thursday, when the passenger manifests were released and scrolled across the bottom of the TV screen, I learned that while I was watching news reports of the attacks I was also watching a woman I knew when I lived in Boston in the mid 1970s being incinerated in the first strike.

So now it's been ten years since all of that.

On the tenth anniversary of my brother's death,
I went to the place where he died, which was in the neighborhood where he lived, and sat there for a while, just feeling what I was feeling. And something shifted. This isn't closure.* These deaths-- these sudden, untimely, unfair deaths -- gore you and leave a wound that never heals. It hurts for the rest of your life. It hurts differently over time, but it always hurts. In situations such as these, there is no such thing as closure.

My brother's death was not an international tragedy. But my hope is that as the thousands of people who lost someone on that day remember, as inevitably they will remember, that they will,
as I did, find the hurt somewhat easier to bear. Even as it remains something that must be borne.

*per m-w .com: an often comforting or satisfying sense of finality ; also : something (as a satisfying ending) that provides such a sense

and on the second day

Errands. If the roads to lower Westchester County are passable.

Where I am in the northeast Bronx, you would never know there had a been such a fierce storm only two days ago. Or any storm, really.

I didn't lose electricity, water, the boiler, or the roof.
The trees are upright. There was a bit of leaf litter on the streets, but so little it's hardly worth mentioning.
All the regulars to my stray cat breakfast buffet are accounted for.

From the news last night I learned that the rain total (so far) for this August was a little over 19 inches. An astronomical high tide indeed.

I feel very lucky.

notes from the mainland*

So far, so good.

10:30 a.m. on primary hurricane, now tropical storm, hit day and I have not lost water or power.

The trees in the park across the street are still upright. The dogwood that I kept when I took out all the other trees in the yard is still standing. And it still has the few red leaves that are the first, deeply welcome, signs the the summer is ending.

I need to get the pump going in the boiler room, before the water level reaches as high as the boiler. 

And I need to get in touch with my family in Delaware. Last night there were reports of tornadoes near Dover and they are near Dover.

But -- so far, so good.

*The Bronx is the only borough of NYC that is not an island, or part of an island.

scared by newscasts

"Better get under cover, Sylvester. There's a storm blowin' up - a whopper, to speak in the vernacular of the peasantry." (Name the film. Anyone?)

All along the East Coast, newscasters, seemingly innocent of irony, are firmly planted on windswept -- and I do mean wind swept -- beaches earnestly urging everyone to follow the goodsense advice of government and leave. Governor Christie (of NJ) actually said "Get the hell off the beaches." It must be true. It was on all the newscasts. "Hell." On television. The president has cut short his vacation by a whole day. Things must be serious.

Bridges will be closed so idio motorists aren't blown into churning, cresting rivers. Mass transit will be shut down tomorrow at noon so the tunnels can flood without impedance. Poor rats, no one rushing about offering shelter for genus Rattus.

Shelters have been established for people and their pets, however. Hospitals and nursing homes have been evacuated. Under it all is the unvoiced roaring of "I'll be d****d if this will be another Katrina." One hopes that that hard lesson was learned.

I have food and cat food, bottled water and duct tape. Batteries, flashlights, and a radio. Candles. Kitchen matches. A pump and a sufficient length of hose. Gas in the car and some cash. Two thick, unread novels. Something new on the design wall, if the studio doesn't flood. I charged the cell phone battery and I still maintain a land line, because usually when the power goes out, the land lines are only things still functioning. (Feel free to call, I'm pretty sure I'll be home.) I am making block ice for the refrigerator and will fill the bathtubs with water. As of July, and for the first time in the entire history of the house, there is insurance. I am grateful I took down all those trees last year.

I have a couple of yard things to do tomorrow and then I'll be as ready as I can be, but I don't trust the integrity of the house to withstand the "unusual weather we're having." (Same film as above. Anyone?)

And, yes, I am a little scared about it all.
More than I want to admit.
Batten the hatches, full steam ahead.

scared myself

Back in May, in an exercise in Dorothy Caldwell's class, we each made a b-i-g painting. I liked mine so much that I had it framed. (There's a bit of glare on the glass.) I have, in general, fallen hard for ink painting.

approximately 48 x 48 inches (122cm) with frame

The framer's assistant liked it so much, he told me that he "didn't want to let it go." The framer liked it so much that on the strength of this one thing he offered to arrange a show for me at a local club.

Yikes.

So I was paralyzed for about a month. Could I really do this 'art thing'? Could I do something like this again? Could I do anything at all? I had the worst cold of my life when I made that painting, should I spend the rest of my life contracting viruses? Or, since I enjoy ink so much, should I just pull up my socks, gather supplies, and do some work?

Now there's an idea. Baby steps.

So today I made a painting. It's not an especially good painting, but it's one more than I had yesterday -- which brings my oeuvre to deux. I think I like it better horizontal (last shown, below). 

as painted (22 x 30 inches high / 56 x 76cm)

 

up side down



horizontal



upside down and horizontal

make it new

Stella explores Formalism.

S: Minimalism. It's too hot to be formal.
M: Sorry. I always confuse them.
S: Go back to chapter four. And while you're up, could you make some more ice . . .? I feel like I'm on fire here.