chaotic seas

the time before i start painting new work, is exhausting.
i wonder if others go through this?
i am familiar with this process now, so i know not to try and fight it
but rather let it wash over me knowing what comes next.
i am not one who can pick up a brush at any given moment and create something
that i connect with...
however, every day, every moment, i am creating.
observing, listening, thinking, reflecting, noticing, reading, repeating, touching, learning, living...
and this is the exhausting part.
my mind will not stop.
there are two things that provide me peace for a time-
long bike rides, and emptying my mind by writing.
other than that>>>-----> i cannot sleep well- eat well- and connect well.
when i am in a conversation it takes everything in me to be present and listen because my mind
is constantly in motion and being stimulated by every single sound, color, smell...
...i cannot be still...
sometimes i wrap my pillow around my head and try and smother out the constant rush.
if i could see inside my mind i would think it looks like a storm
-but-
i know that at its climax i will pick up my brush
and paint
and my mind will quiet
and i will enter into myself so deeply that its as though i am fully immersed in the calm
after the storm.
when this is over
suddenly i am thrust back into life that has felt so far away
sea legs
then
well
...life comes back...

life in quotes

"I want my life to be a mountain stream that rushes down wild flowered slopes through pine glades into green valleys, I do not want culverts to contain my force or cement to channel my flow, nothing to break my life's course with roots, stones and sand. "
Lowell McMullin

yep

This journey is best taken
chest out
arms wide
and always
...ready...
to
jump
 ~michelle 

Moses rod

i am trying to dam the water in my mind
so that i might explore the bottom
then surface for new air

 ~michelle

"they are hip without being slick,
intelligent without being corny,
they are intellectual as hell and know all about Pound
without being pretentious or talking too much about it,
they are very quiet,
they are very Christlike"

describing subterraneans -Jack Kerouac

personal stuff

sometimes i feel lost in this world without my pops...
he was the only person on this planet who got me.
i mean really got me
knew me so well...even the tiny burrows one only knows about themselves.
when we would be at family gatherings, or in rooms together and i would say something
that had hidden undertones, or i felt nervous or uncomfortable, or i told one of my stupid
jokes that no one gets...i would glance at him and he would give me the most understanding
wink...and i knew i was loved and known.
that's big shit!

soak

choices are personal

"I know who I am,
and who I may be,
if I choose..."
~ Don Quixote

Walden

" I went to the woods, because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived. I wanted...to drive life into a corner and reduce it to its lowest terms, and, if it proved to be mean, why then to get the whole genuine meanness of it, and publish its meanness to the world; or if it were sublime, to know it by experience, and be able to give a true account of it in my next excursion."
- Henry David Thoreau, "Walden"

days that have passed

winterizing

settling in
my nook, cozy and warm
my surroundings please me
ready to snuggle in for the coming seasons
but
still restless...
dreams of travels fill my sleep and peek into my days.
thoughts of dirty toes, stream baths, coastal Oregon, medium format documentation,
dark circle travel eyes, timeless days, discoveries, late night car radio stations, sugary teeth and tongues, travel gut, roadside fruit finds, roadside tree climbs, contortion sleep, endless fields and farms and signs, memories of childhood travel, glove boxes overflowing with maps, sunflower seeds scattered on floorboards, stories, singalongs, greasy diners, and realizing that there are many, many, many, ways to live.

but until that there is this ...and this... is where i am and where i am content to be for now...

new casa + night-time+grainy

that now this

first i was there, now here, soon there

it is in isolation, in this special place, that the deep grooves are made...hefty pockets of eccentricities, insights, awake dreams, clear streams of thoughts, knowings, deep breaths, glow, peace, wildness, connection with self...

it is almost time. this pattern so familiar... reclusion-> digging in soil, reading books... emergence->juxtapose...solitude-> paint, write, observe, learn...contrast-> dance, laughter, connecting...wilderness->inward

it is almost time. my spirit is quieting, beginning to follow the sun.

  ~michelle

la mer

dans trois mois, je vous réunir avec

jusque-là

Vendredi soir