restingmotion

Who Am I? Writer? Artist?...Maybe. Does it even Matter?

A few months back someone referred to me as an artist.  I paused, perhaps a little surprised.  But I did not object.  It was, in fact, an idea I had been toying with for quite some time.  But as is typical for me, nothing is ever simple.  Increasingly I think and dream about creating daily.  Increasingly I think about art, about craft, about living, and about the way, the act of living itself can be about art, can be art itself.  

 

But, me? An artist?  

I am not asking for affirmation, or denial here.  I am simply exploring an idea.  We all have a say in how we define ourselves, and at least partially in how the wold defines us.  I love math but I am not a mathematician.  I do not think like a scientist.  I never have and I never will.  I have been a businessperson, and I have strong organization and managerial skills, but they are only a small part of how I define myself. I struggled with this when I was younger, but not so much anymore.  I suppose I could say I am a writer.  At one point I did, but the idea didn't mesh well in my mind.  I do write, although I've never published a book, in fact I've never had the desire. But there are tons of writers of all stripes. And yet, I have been blogging consistently for 14 years.  I've published nearly 2300 blog posts, and although I've never tried to build an audience, to stick to a theme, or even particularly cared about how many people read what I write, those assorted mutterings have garnered over a million page views.  Tiny.  Really tiny.  But still there, a statistic, in a world that is obsessed with measurements and statistics.  But I write because it is a part of how I see the world, it is part, but only a part of the act of creation.

When I was in California a few weeks ago, one of the places the group went was the Sonoma Valley Museum of Art.  I was entranced with this small space, particularly taken with the work of a couple of the artists but one of the things that has really remained in my head, and my dreams, was the art produced by local schoolchildren.  There were truly amazing things there, and I don't believe I was the only one who felt this way.  But what particularly struck me is that I think that art, the need to create, the need to compress and express something about life that is intangible in a tangible way is part of human nature.  Art.  Music.  Creation.  The yearning for meaning.  These are the things that make us human.  They are a part of all of us, although that is not to say we are all musicians, artists, philosophers, etc.  But perhaps also, we don't allow ourselves to flourish.

Mark Rothko said "A painting is not a picture of an experience.  It is an experience."  I love this statement because it gets right at the heart of something elemental and essential.  It also reminds me that although we classify and judge, it is the experience itself, the experience felt, that makes art important.  We can judge.  But experience itself is true. An artist translates something ephemeral into something tangible.  We humans are complex beings, and we all express and experience and feel in different ways.  Each and every experience is true.  Just because something speaks to you, and speaks deeply, does not mean that it will speak to me.  We like to judge things, even art.  And I am not saying there are not geniuses, people who create things that speak to millions and generations.  Rothko was one of those geniuses.  But art isn't about being Mark Rothko, or even about selling or publishing or whatever.  It is a way of looking at the world, of experiencing it, and a compulsion to start that conversation and share that experience

But back to my own question.  The person who called me an artist was one of the contractors I am working with.  This person has never seen anything I have made, at least not knowingly.  I've worn clothing I've made but more about that later.  My initial assumption was that I was being called an artist because I am creating a "studio" or a glorified sewing room, although I intend to do far more than sew, knit, and weave in that space.  But I think it was more than that.  I think that person sees my choices in redoing the house as something creative. And I am of the mind that life itself can be art, that the act of living can be a kind of creative dialog with time and space and the people we choose to share that time and space with.  Can one be a artist of one's space? Of one's life?  I don't know.

Artist.  If I tell people I am an artist they assume I paint.  Well, I actually dream about painting, although I have no training and no skill.  Occasionally I modify that by saying I am a fiber artist.  Which may be partially true, but to me it feels the same way saying I am a writer feels.  It describes something I do but not who I am.   I may be an artist who works with fiber.  I may also simply be a craftsperson.  I struggle with the lines between things.  I always have.  Lines are so arbitrary and I always want to merge them, to cross over and outside, to look at things differently.

On this subject, this quote, from Jean-Claude Ellena's The Diary of a Nose, resonates particularly strongly with my own thoughts:

Craftsman, artist: I have never managed to settle for one or other of these definitions for myself. I feel like a craftsman when I am completely wrapped up in making a perfume; I feel like an artist when I imagine the perfume I need to make. In fact, I constantly juggle with the two standpoints. If perfume is first and foremost a creation of the mind, it cannot actually be created without the mastery of true skill.

I feel like an artist when I imagine:  I feel like an artist when I imagine making something, imagine creating an experience, a space to be experienced.  I feel like an artist when I see that the way what we see as known or fixed really isn't fixed at all, it is just the framework we have designated for ourselves.  I feel like an artist because I want to translate that feeling into an experience. I feel like a craftsman when I am making something.  For a long time, most of my sewing or knitting was purely about need or want, about copying something I wanted and making it.  It was mildly creative, perhaps.  It was craft. Increasingly what I make starts with an idea in my head, or a material, or something I see on the street, and that somehow gets translated into something else, something I want to create:  a taste, a garment, an embroidery, a picture.  It is never about the thing itself but about the experience the thing helps create.  But all of that also requires skill, and skill is craft.  All artists are craftsmen.  They have to be in order to become good at their art, to to create that dialogue that translates an idea into something that can be experienced by others.   The trick is in being able to create the bridge from imagination to experience.  

When I was in California with my museum group these questions of art and conversations and design were floating around, almost as if they were in the air we breathed.  Or maybe that was the wine.  One of the conversations was about the first piece in a room that drew you in, and whether or not that was the piece, if you were going to buy, that you would buy.  For me, that is not the case.  The first thing that captures my attention in a room draws me in yes.  But that first thing is rarely the thing that sticks with me, the thing I am drawn into conversation with.  Donald Hess, of the Hess Collection in Napa, buys art that speaks to him, that keeps him up at night.  That is what has always drawn me....that sense of conversation.  That is what I see as important, things not merely as things, but as a conversation, and meaning.  I can't buy all or even most of the art that haunts my dreams.  The pieces shown in this post are a few of those items though.  All are my photos, from the Napa trip and my favorite museum in San Antonio, the McNay.

 

 

 

A Little Experimentation

Still a little scattered here.  Expect this state of randomness to continue for the next two months.  I will be posting, but don't think a fixed schedule works for me during this liminal stage, and it is liminal: a period of yes but not yet; a period between what was and what will be;  an amorphous space bridging the person I both am and am-becoming, and the space that both sparks and reflects.

 

In the meantime, I shall entertain you with more mundane efforts.

I've been playing in the kitchen.  It all started on a whim.  Somewhere in my travels, I saw this jar of artichoke cream by Les Moulins Majoub and was intrigued.  It ends up that I adore this stuff. It is wonderful on toast, with crudités, with an avocado for lunch.  I could eat it by the spoonful.

 

Frankly however, it is a bit too expensive for my budget to accommodate it as a daily indulgence.  I've looked up buying it online and the prices range from $12 to $17 a jar, not including shipping and/or tax, or not quite $2/ounce up to about $3/ounce.    A rare indulgence then.  I bought a second jar with an order of other pantry items from an online retailer.  I love Knoxville but there are still things I consider essential that I cannot get locally.  Some of things I can make myself. And yet there are other things I continue to order in, although far fewer than I originally anticipated.

 

I have never said I was not spoiled and privileged. But I also realize that life is a matter of choice.  There are things each of us choose to emphasize, and things that are irrelevant in our personal priorities.  I tend to opt for really good food, not necessarily always fancy, but high in quality.  My food, music, and book budgets are high. Not so much the rest.  Well, scratch that.  At the moment my construction budget is high and everything else is scraping by.

But back to artichoke spread.  One evening I scraped the last bits of my jar of artichoke spread onto a bowl of chili.  I topped it with minced onion and bell pepper.  I was in heaven.  I eat chili regularly, at least during the fall and winter, but the artichoke made it seem more spring-like, more season-less.  The truth is that although I now eat my chili plain, well sometimes with avocado or onion or peppers, I truly miss topping my chili with a dollop of sour cream. It is the one dairy item I actually miss on a regular basis.  Artichoke cream might be a close second, and it will probably work as a dollop of something savory and creamy on top of other dishes as well

 

And so the experimentations began. I now produce my own artichoke cream.  It may not be quite as good as the original.  It may be better -- already my memory fails me.  I suspect that Les Moulins Majoub uses locally grown artichokes at the peak of flavor and good local olive oil. I use frozen organic artichoke hearts.  They add garlic; I do not.  I use preserved lemon; they do not. Two pounds of frozen artichoke hearts, 16 ounces of a good fruity olive oil (I do not skimp here), preserved lemon, thyme, bay leaf, vinegar yields about a quart of artichoke cream.  It works out to about 65 cents an ounce, still a treat, because I indulge myself with a generous spoonful, but a treat I can justify.   This is beginning to become a staple in my pantry.

But it is not yet perfect.  My artichoke puree is not quite as smooth as the original.  I only brought a fine mesh chinois with me to the apartment.  I need a coarser mesh, in either a chinois or Tamis, or perhaps a food mill, to produce a smoother cream.  I have all those things, but they are in storage.  So the final refinements are yet to come.  But in the meantime, my artichoke cream is good.  I am happy in the kitchen and in the dining room.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Sumer is icumen in.......and I am not prepared

ARGHHHHH!

 

That is exactly how I felt yesterday morning.  I settled down.  A period of morning meditation, or at least stillness and deep breathing, helped, as it always does.  I don't necessarily expect profound thoughts, or even necessarily anything akin to medication or prayer on a daily basis, but I do feel that even those mornings  when all I can do is be still and quiet have a profound effect on my equilibrium during the course of the day.

 

But still.  We are getting into crunch time.  In roughly seven  weeks the house will be finished, at least, supposedly, finished enough for me to move in.  In 8 weeks I will be home, fully home.  I need to start packing.  There are still tons of things that need to be decided, chosen, tended to and so forth and so on, and even so, in my head "move-in" remained some amorphous future goal, not yet fully formed, distant and obscure.  Until yesterday morning, when I awoke in a panic.

The kitchen cabinets were (are) being installed.  Having seen them I knew my first choices for pulls and knobs were not going to work and I was jolted awake, filled with nervous, buzzy, vibrant, jittery energy.  I swooped around the web, looking at cabinet hardware, simultaneously worried but oddly calm.  Calm because for the first time, at least in terms of doors and knobs and pulls, I knew exactly what I wanted, knew the feelings that cabinets and their hardware should evoke.  I had vision.  

 

I had been asked to select cabinet hardware a few weeks ago, but at the time there were no cabinets in the rooms, just empty spaces.  Selections and choices had been made but those choices held only an ephemeral place in my thoughts.  Too many choices and decisions had been made but had not yet materialized.  My brain felt simultaneously overflowing and empty.  So my initial choices were made based on an abstract vision.  Some of those initial choices were good, others not so much.  I had a better sense of the library, for example, or the guest bathroom, than the kitchen.  But both of those rooms were evolving steadily, whereas the kitchen remained a blank box, white and empty. And then, with the appearance of cabinets, even standing around like awkward teenagers unsure where they were to go in life, clarity descended like a clichéd vision of clouds opening, and I pulled together a new hardware list.  It is not yet final, there are still a few samples to see on site, and final decisions to made.

 

Bur hardware was not my only source of panic.  Summer seems to have suddenly peeked its head around the corner.  The weather went from cool to hot, at least according to my mind.  I am not a good southerner. 80° is hot; it is my ideal of the perfect (maximum) summer temperature.  Alas, I have never lived somewhere where this was the reality of summer and it may exist only in my imagination.  Come August I will look back and think how pleasant the world was when it was only 80°.  Yesterday morning I pulled out a step-stool and climbed to the top of my closet, pulling own boxes of summer clothes.  Piles materialized as I struggled with questions.  What fits? What doesn't? What can I wear now?   Eventually I found something to wear but my summer wardrobe, with all its unanswered questions, remains, waiting for answers and yet more decisions, in piles around my bedroom.

 

The good news is that I have scheduled the movers.  I need to start packing.  As I shift my closet, my winter things can be packed for the move.  I shan't need them.  Well, I am going to Chicago, so I can keep one or two outfits.  

 

Actually many of my winter clothes are showing substantial wear.  They may not last another season.  I was thinking of making something new, but I see no point in that now, at least not in making cool-weather clothes.  The hot season beckons.  If I make something it will be for wear in this season.  Right now, I simply need to balance my thoughts of making with my thoughts of moving.  My dreams remain in creation mode, imagining art and craft and a world of possibilities, while the reality is that I need to be pulling in and putting away. I am moving into make-do time. I can make things for current use with the materials at hand. Nothing new comes in unless it is specifically needed for the house, but my time really needs to be in preparation, not creation.

 

It is morning again.  I am not in as much of a tizzy as yesterday morning.  I have a plan.  I have boxes, although some of them are still in my car.  If I want to pack the apartment and remain sane, if I want to pack without excessive back pain, I need to start now. I need to work slowly and steadily throughout all the other decisions and activities that are yet to come.  I am not yet quite calm, but I have taken that all-important first step.

 

A Catch Up Post

It seems that a month-long break did not quite eliminate my indecision regarding book posts, and now I feel the overwhelming need to catch up, to post not merely an update on March reading, but February as well.  Actually I suppose I just want to make collages of all the covers, and I feel no need to write reviews or synopses.  It seems I can live with that.  Sometimes pretty sparkly things, pictures and surfaces are enough to hold the memories that lie beneath.

 

I did think that I the reprieve would allow me time to explore purpose and intention, to come up with some kind of coherent plan or theme for this blog, but all I really learned was that I am really not interested in limiting myself to any specific set of topics or themes.  So much for that.  Increasingly, it appears to me that there is a time for plans for schedules and goals, a time for "forward motion" and a time to just go with the flow.  I'm opting for the flow, whatever that means.  Frankly all I decided is that I don't have to decide.

 

And so I had fun playing with collages.

As you can see, I read five really good books in February and a lot of popcorn fiction.  I'd rather spend 2 hours with a simple bit of fictional fluff, than watching an average movie or television show, but that is just me.  And a good bit of this reading was accomplished on the treadmill, in the time I have devoted to slowly walking and teaching myself how to breathe properly, engaging in this tediously slow pursuit of this health-more-than-fitness project I decided to take on for this year.  My trainer, and yes I have consulted one, told me it would take at least six months before I saw real results, possibly a year, which isn't much when I think that I am probably trying to reverse 45 years worth of bad habits.  Nonetheless, I tend to grow depressed and think it is all a waste of time, and then I notice that I actually see improvement in little but profoundly telling ways. Besides which, we all know that fitness does not necessarily imply health.  We see evidence of this all around us, though we try to convince ourselves otherwise.  The obverse is, of course, also true.  And so, onward.

 

The light reading also offered me a lot of quiet time to absorb the other, simultaneous and more transformative, reading.  The five good books all challenged my basic assumptions and views of the world in one way or another and those tumultuous feelings always need time to seep through the intersteces of one's neurological make-up.  Nothing earth-shakingly new in terms of basic information, more just an aspect of turning a corner and seeing something through new eyes.  Yes, I am writing in oblique fragments.

 

Ahh, I see somehow my March collage is more linear, with the best books at the bottom and the most frivolous on top.  The Elena ranks as the fluffiest book of the month.  I don't believe it even filled the available time in a flight from Knoxville to Atlanta, therefore less than an hour. Mostly easily forgettable, but with scattered jewels of thoughts.    There seems to have been less popcorn fiction in March, but there was also less treadmill work due to travel, adventure and a sinus infection.  A couple of these books showed up on my Instagram feed, and I like that format as a way of sharing impressions and passing thoughts, snapshots of a day, once again without a particular plan, or any need for explanation or consistency.

 

I am Not Your Perfect Mexican Daughter was purchased on a whim and donated to the Children's Diversity and Justice Library.  Ordinary People and Solar Bones will remain on my shelves.  Channeling Italo Calvino, who said "A classic is a book that has never finished saying what it has to say", it seems like these two novels offer the promise of a longer conversation.  I've never been a person who reads a book only once, which is, of course, also why I am building a library.  Classics and personal favorites, the promise of books yet unread, the familiarity and ongoing conversations with beloved words.  I miss my library.  That reunion will be quite sweet.

 

Looking at Knoxville Through Visitor’s Eyes

Sometimes it is good to pretend like one is a visitor to one’s own town.  One might note things, previously noticed perhaps, but quickly forgotten.  One might find magic in that which otherwise seems ordinary.

 

I engaged in a little such activity a couple of weekends past, becoming a visitor in my own town during the Big Ears Festival.  

 

Yes I listened to a lot of music.  Although I think that generally I may not have been as adventurous in some of my selections as some years, I also think I heard more performance than at any prior festival. It was the first year I was truly comfortable with the “sampling” mentality, of walking in or out of something that wasn’t grabbing my attention.  It was also the first year that I didn’t worry about what I might be missing, rather just allowing myself to enjoy whatever I was listening to at the time.

And although I walked around town a lot, averaging 7 to 10 miles most days, I also took the new trolley service to some venues, and this proved to be better for my back as well as my stamina.  I think previous years I would walk 14 miles or more a day, if I was able to do so.  An added benefit of the  trolley proved to be the way it allowed me to engage in conversations with other attendees, to meet people, to observe and explore opinions and attitudes other than my own.  

The fact that the trolley was available, as well as other options such as Uber and Joyride Mobile, I was also able to relax more during my walks up and down Gay street and around downtown.  I was able to stop and pay attention.  Hence the collages above, from the three full days I spent at Big Ears.  None of the photos are of anything particularly significant in and of itself, but I am also realizing that is the way I take photos, not necessarily of significant things, but of details that catch my eye.

 

When I left he festival my head was filled with music and a new appreciation for this little city I call home.

 

 

Wonders

There are moments in life when we learn the world is not what it seemed, not what we had previously assumed it to be.  Sometimes those moments are full of discord and upset.  At other times they are miracles of wonder.

I remember one such episode as if it were yesterday, although 38 years have passed.  It was the day I picked up my glasses.  I don't remember much about the actual day, about picking up the glasses, or about walking to back to my dorm from the optician's.  What I specifically remember is walking into my room and looking out the window.  It was spring; the trees were filled with buds and blossoms. I could see individual flowers on the trees, I could see the leaves beginning to unfurl, individual leaves, not just an impression of greenness.  I could see the leaves from a distance, not just from proximity, when I was standing near a tree. I suddenly realized that the world was not meant to look like a late Monet painting, and I was entranced.  Whenever I look back on that day, that same feeling of entrancement floods my memory.

 

I am certain that I had once seen well.  I hadn't needed glasses as a child after all. I did have a tendency to cross my eyes, and it turned out that I had some congenital abnormalities in my vision or the way my brain processed the input from my eyes.  But I am also sure that my eyesight faded so gradually that I never thought it about it, never really recognized what I was missing.  Until it was revealed. 

 

That same sense of wonder returned to my mind this past month, the day I picked up hearing aides, although this time I was awed not with sight, but with sound.  Much as with my glasses, I knew I needed help hearing and I was ready to have the hearing aides.  I have seen too many people who wait too long, whose brains are no longer able to cope with the additional stimulus, who cannot adapt to what was lost.  I was determined that I would not be one of those people, so I went into the appointment knowing I would walk out with hearing aides.

 

Even so, I was not prepared for the symphony that awaited me once I walked outside the door.  The birds were singing and I was enveloped in a cloud of song, sweet sopranos, base rhythms, melody and harmony intertwined.  I have always loved the sounds of the birds, loved even the sounds of the leaves in the wind, finding music surrounding me every day, but I had not realized how much sound I had lost, how enveloped on a cushion of sound I could become, and my first wish was was simply that I not forget, that I not allow this marvelous cacophony to fade into the background, that I not stop paying attention.

 

Yes, at times I was uncomfortably jarred by certain sounds -- the beep of my car telling me I was too close to something, the first time my phone rang, the sounds of traffic in downtown Knoxville while I was at big ears.  But I adapted.  And there were other sounds as well.  The soprano sax was sweeter, soft female voices were easier to interpret, I could hear the chirp of a bird despite the traffic, the splatter of drops of water. The melody of the earth is still present no matter how we try to pave it over.  I could focus upon, and pick out the sounds from specific voices or instruments, much more clearly than I had before, much like the way I hear music in my head when I read a score. I walked around town, I listened to music both in concerts and on the street, and I felt like indeed, I had big ears, big ears that were reveling in all the miraculous sounds, large and small, that surrounded me.

 

I hope I never lose that wonder.  I am sure that there will be more days in which I am preoccupied, in which I don't pay attention to the many wondrous details surrounding me.  But I hope that I recall to stop, to look. to listen, as much as possible. 

 

March Blog Break

As I stated in my last post, I feel like I have found my footing, and reconnected some link between the person I was, the person I might have been, the person I am now, and the person I might be, whoever that person will be.

But I also find that I am overwhelmed and I have let that sense of being pulled in too many directions fracture the center.  I feel like my life has become a melee.  I need to regroup. This blog will return on April 1 (no fooling). 

 

 

The Bend in The Path

Last night I dreamt that I was on a highway in the rain at night and I was lost....  Last night I dreamt I was lost on a highway, I made a turn onto another highway and suddenly I knew I was on the right path, the path home.....  Last night I dreamt I was on a highway in the rain and I was cold and soaking wet.... Last night I dreamt I was on a highway in the rain on my bicycle....Last night I dreamt that I was on my bicycle at night in Michigan, and that I had been riding my bicycle across the country from California..... Last night I dreamt that I had been traveling aimlessly, vaguely headed in the right direction (east), but without a known path I had wandered slightly astray....  Last night I dreamt that although I had perhaps floundered, I had, in fact, found the route home.

 

Dreams are, of course, often not linear, at least mine aren't.  They are jumpy and scattered, oddly fragmentary and yet at the same time whole.  Increasingly I tend to view life the same way, although sometimes I wonder if I have wandered off the generally accepted path and find myself somewhere wilderness.

Last night's dream was not, in many ways surprising.  I started one project, the house, that was supposed to go one way, follow one path, and that path has changed and grown and become far more complex than I had wanted.  What I had hoped would be three discrete projects over a period of years has turned into something that at times feels like a storm crashing around me, even though in the end I know it will all come together.  

So too, my supposed idyll in the apartment.  I had hoped this would be a time outside of normal life and obligations.  A time to explore creative impulses, to reflect and refine.  Well reflection has occurred, although I sometimes feel it has been dragged out of me kicking and screaming.  Refinement as well.  Nothing is as I had hoped it would be.  And yet, I am not worse for this wandering and at times overwhelming path.  I may even be better.

The sun is out, for a part of this week anyway.  The house is coming along.  Stucco is going up on the outside walls.  The garage and studio are progressing.  We are playing with layouts so that the electrical wiring can go in.    Floors and tiles are also starting to be installed in the house.  In short things are starting to come together.  A new path is being revealed.  I may grow lost again, but at the moment promise reigns.

This is true personally as well even though the path has not been as simple or as clear as I had hoped.  I should not be surprised at that.  If dreams are a form of metaphor which helps us to understand our paths in life, I increasingly feel that life itself is a metaphor, and part of our life's journey is actually a job of deciphering and understanding.  We can explore, or refuse to explore, to the best of our ability.  I often, and I suspect I am not at all alone in this, want to take the easiest, safest, kindest path.  I just want to be content, to have fun, to be happy.  And yet each time I am turned upside down I find that my previous understanding of happiness was just a reflection in a mirror, that I have never seen beyond the surface of things.

 

And so here I am again actually, finding myself heading exactly where I always thought I wanted to be, except that the road to this place was not at all what I expected, nor is the place itself quite what I had imagined.  Well, I suppose that is not surprising. If life is a metaphor, then the words we use, the understandings we form as we unravel each level, prove inadequate with each layer we manage to peel back. And like any good metaphor, my purpose, my understanding, my meaning, can never be more than a partial view of the whole, and therefore completely different from other's understanding. Different and yet the same because we are all the same matter, all the same energy.  All completely alike and completely different.

 

Quite frankly there are days I think I would have remained much happier had I never fallen into a rabbit hole, had I continued to refuse to delve beneath the surface.  I liked my life. It was, by all contemporary social measures,  a successful and happy life. Even in the face of grief and loss, I could have clung to that life.  Some part of me may wish I had; there would have been less pain, fewer tears.   I would not wish it on anyone.  And yet at the same time I would, because every time I re-experience joy I see that my former understanding was but a shadow of what joy could be.  Make no mistake.  I am no wiser.  I am just as foolish, just as attached to my own little bits and bobs of this and that as I ever was, even as I realize that they could all disappear tomorrow and the essential fact of who I am, of joy, of sorrow, and also of love, would not change.  I am just as lost.  In fact the more I think I know where I am going, the more I find I have lost my way.

And yet, I have found my footing yet again.  Each time I fall in a hole, I come up simultaneously wanting less and more, being less and more. Who knows what the next blossom will be, or in fact, if it will be at all distinguishable from the blossom that came before.  Why blossoms? Well the amaryllis has sent up two more flower stalks, from nothing it appears.  I thought the bulbs were spent, done, complete.  And yet, new blooms are incontrovertibly present.

 

 

Pulled in Many Directions

 

it seems there never really is a good time for a week of rest, although it is possible that my own inclination toward too-muchness hinders the process somewhat.  I am still sorting it all out --- my reading time, and by extension my writing time, remains somewhat constrained -- and more often than not I feel simultaneously still and yet fragmented and pulled in many directions.  I feel, in short, much the way I imagine the woman in this painting by Pablo Picasso feels.   I saw this painting, Crouching Woman, at the McNay during my last visit to San Antonio, and it came to mind this morning as I try to juggle the things I want to do, the things I need to do, and the realities of negotiating a path through the competing demands on my time and my energy levels.  I am not sure what Picasso actually intended, but I see a brilliant portrayal of the multi-faceted roles and demands placed on women, and the complex angles and folds created by the push-pull of intelligence and emotion, time and space, expectation and desire.

 

Perhaps I am reading too much into this.  But that just tells you where I am coming from on this particular morning.

 

I am reading again, although only in short bursts, and the amount of time in which I can read varies significantly with the light and the size of the type.  How much running around I have been doing also seems to have an effect on my vision.  I never realized that driving itself was so hard on the eyes.  Rain doesn't help, of course. Rather than writing I have focused on tasks that may be less appealing, but more important perhaps.  Tasks which can be divided into short bursts of activity are doable:  taxes, budget revisions, filling out paperwork for an appointment with a new doctor.  Spending time in the kitchen is easier than sewing, or doing any kind of needlework.  I can knit, as my current project is simple, but all too often my eyes are too tired by the time I sit, and I fall asleep. This struggle between energy and exhaustion, visual acuity and blurriness, has also upended my sleep patterns, which is not helping me balance my path through the push-pull of obligations, but I assume it will all sort itself out in time.

 

Despite all of this I have been out and about.  I attended two fabulous concerts which I hope to write about while they remain fresh in my memory.  There was one evening when there were three concerts I wanted to attend, and alas, it was also raining and I attended none of them.  I've had a few lunches with friends. Last night I went off to the Clarence Brown Theater to see King Charles III, which I enjoyed to a point. I think the play itself is brilliant but although all the performances were good, and some were excellent, I felt there was an excess of earnestness and a certain lack of wit that would have elevated the production. There were also more than a few instances where the cadence of the iambic pentameter felt strained and my inner grump threatened to surface.  But overall it was good and an enjoyable evening.

 

It strikes me as interesting that this, the most seriously dramatic performance I have seen at the theater, has been my least favorite production.  It is odd because I have always been more of a fan of serious drama than of lighthearted fun on stage.  Perhaps friends and colleagues who claimed I was too serious for my own good, were right.  Perhaps I just needed to learn to let go.  But this year, it has been the light stuff that has truly appealed to me, which I have most enjoyed.  I saw Candide twice, even though I once despised the work, and loved it.  I laughed so hard throughout The SantaLand Diaries that I could hardly contain myself, and I could have seen A Christmas Carol happily more than once.   The same was true last year, and I still smile at the thought of a couple of contemporary light operas, and Beautiful: The Carole King Musical.. Perhaps it is not so much that I am changing, as I always had this sappy happy inner core, but that I no longer care if my sappy side is good enough and think that my inner grumpy-pants has had more than her share of time in the sun.  

 

But now my eyes hurt and I have spent too much time here while other tasks are calling my name. I shall return when I can.

 

Home Away From Home in San Antonio: Hotel Emma

I've been in and out of San Antonio all of my life.  My late uncle lived here, and his wife, my aunt Lillian still does.  My grandmother lived in the Menger Hotel for some years, and I loved visiting her there.  That hotel was a grand adventure and an exciting home-away-from-home, although I have not stayed there in recent years.

On my last visit, I stayed at Hotel Emma, housed in the landmark Pearl's Brewhouse, at the heart of the relatively newly redeveloped Pearl Brewery district.  I've been to the district for the farmer's market, for brunch, and for shopping.  But this was my first stay.  I may have found a San Antonio home away from home.

I was entranced as I stood, waiting to check in, part of a sudden bubble of new arrivees.  I was happy to look at the Mexican tile floor.  Of course it seems I have a long history of looking at floors, and remembering them.  The only thing I remembered from my first visit to the Alhambra at age 7 was a particular floor.  Thirty years later I was happy to find that floor once again, connecting my childhood self to my adult self in a strange land.

Of course this tile floor also reminded me of my own, as yet not installed, Mexican tile floor.  This one will be in my guest bathroom.

That first evening, after checking in and unpacking, I wandered down to the library for a welcome cocktail.  The library was a welcoming and cozy place filled with books and comfortable chairs.  I was particularly attracted to an interesting collection of art books and I spent some time perusing the collection, especially in the mornings, when I would wander down for coffee.   Coffee was available every morning beginning at 6AM, freshly brewed and served by a hotel employee.  This was just one of the many details that make the place special and welcoming.  Coffee, served in a real china cup, and a touch of human contact is no small thing.  I could have had a pot sent up to my room, but I think I was more attracted to the idea of coffee in the library, and one morning, when it was cold and rainy and my aunt was otherwise occupied, I just settled in with a book and my journal, watching and occasionally conversing with a steady stream of hotel guests, young and old.

In fact complimentary coffee, and plenty of bottled water, generously distributed in the rooms were among the small details that make the Hotel Emma stand out.  It is not that I could not or would not buy coffee or water, but that it is ultimately a small expense that feels far more welcoming than forcing your guests to buy these things.  It is the little details that make me want to come back, even more than the well-appointed rooms and the fabulous view from my window.

Even the bathrooms made me happy.  They seemed to fit the space, feeling luxuriously modern yet still in keeping with the vintage vibe of the hotel, and were supplied with generous towels, cushy bath mats, and full-sized bottles of soap and shampoo.  One felt like a welcome guest.  I appreciated all the small details like period-appropriate ceramic switch plates and an old-fashioned battery operated alarm clock, as well as well-thought out and generous outlets to accommodate all sorts of modern electronic accoutrements.

I had a great weekend despite the weather.  In fact, Hotel Emma is a great retreat, a great home away from home, and it was probably the perfect hotel in which to spend an otherwise miserable weekend.  The food was fabulous as was the bar, and there were places to settle in and either converse with one's neighbors or curl up with a book.

Granted I loved the thoughtful planning of the space, the industrial-chic look, and the thoughtful seating areas that were actually comfortable and inviting. But Emma felt like a place to gather, not simply a place to rest one's head.  It is also conveniently located as well.   The Pearl district has several inviting places to eat and shop and the hotel is on the river walk, offering a good place for either a casual stroll or a more ambitious run.   It is only a mile and a half, more or less, to the historical arts district, La Villita along the riverwalk, slightly less to a plethora of restaurants and bars.   Of course you don't have to walk, Emma is also an easy drive or uber away from downtown restaurants, an easy center from which to explore, or in which just to stay in, as I did when I wasn't visiting my aunt or my favorite museum. I could happily go back tomorrow.

 

Top photo, of the Hotel Emma, is taken from the Hotel Emma website.  All other photos are mine.