Monday, January 19, 2009

January Travails


"Travails."
"Ordeals."

Moments, days, weeks, I'm talking about experiences with this work I do. Talk of "My work makes me." (Owns me too. )

It was more than a year since I made this drawing. The illusion is that these polygons are 2, 3 layers deep, and behind them is an infinite blackness, an abyss, a vast darkness, a cosmos.

As to what I was doing, thinking, feeling I can't recollect. Not without consulting my drawing book notes and logs from that time period. (These store bought black books are not just fro drawing; I keep my logs, in them -some record tracking significant events, get glimmers later of to how I felt. 'Enduring' when the events were hardships bouts with ailments or what I call 'my misadventures'. (Read: un-adventures.) The daily misplacing and or forgetting my wallet, keys glasses.... -mishaps. I do not beat myself about it. I (ha!) take it in my stride....

Right up to and and including giving Annette, NancyKay an eightieth birthday party -inviting some old friends and current neighbors, new friends and colleagues.. We did it at Bottino's on 9th between W 24 and 25th in Manhattan.



From that party to and beyond into January I was inhot water, thinking I wrecked my website, lost the entire 'ufemisms,com web site. For a while, it entirely disappeared. Gone. I face the consequences and tell myself, "No looking back." The whole e enterprise undone after my having purchased a spanking new 17" Mac Book Pro.

This idea I had, "Learn to be my own web master! Doable." Sure. I'd be my own webmaster! (Read webwaster.") Ha! The lone and only web address that was up and working is this one. Agony of agonies? A sort of lightness of being? I am very relaxed. The serenity is my atenolol tablet calming me down. The end is not as 'imminent'

Kim, Arthur, Eva: they know fear and dread -enduring the agonies of chemo, the scurring to doctors, hospitals, even to other cities like Kim at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore...

Still way off. -not nearly coping with that kind of brink ... Well, not that stage of annihilation.

PS: My web provider was able to recover the missing site. It is up and running after all.


At this moment I'm looking at a page in one of my drawing books -its dated 2/21/08 ... mentions I'm planning a mailart series of books. The recipients are archivists, gallery directors, colleagues, also a friend or two. Some 26 plus envelopes to address, weigh, lick stamps for and mail. I'd been on a binge of doing a lot of drawing. Happily gratified I've as many favorites to scan, print -replicate. They fill the pages of my book/mailart numbered and signed editions. These are looking more like my ones of a kind 'Waste-Nots'. These are laser replications using a new HP copier/printer/scanner. Oh Wow!


All of 2008 (except toward the end) was a great year! The book artist loves the library, -Blithely goes to as many different branches of them for readings on cosmology. I'm in bliss thinking how I will be remember having read what will years later be regarded as 'The Great Books' on the subject. My musings lead me to lead small library discussion groups in Long Beach, giving Interactive topics like "Does the Universe Have a Purpose?" Workshops that are more about evolution and cosmology, the Big Bang and the expanding universe. Ah,me, those of bible-reading prognosticators. How they gnash their teeth! I was making and fantasizing that my '5gontess' jpeg'd pages were so very 'really cosmological'.

I wind down doing volunteering: the '08 spring art festival (Art Launch). For the last time, (I hope/think.) Perhaps.
Meanwhile I'm doing workshops at Molloy College in Rockville Center, the New York City Math Fair later in march, the Family Math Day in Massapequa,....

Above is a view of kids assorted members of their families in one of the galleries at the art museum where I was invited (and paid too) to present activities that were 'hands on'. The show was of art inspired by numbers, geometry and mathematics.

The bald bearded guy in the glasses, the tallone toward the left (in the blue jacket): that's me.

The one who spent months 'agonizing, harnessed'. How I 'endured'! The anxieties, the agonies!-in the thrall of "Travails!" Yes, "Ordeals" preparing for it, "Moments, Days, Weeks" ..... hacking away at this difficult work I say I love so much. Yes, the "Work That Makes Me," Just now, I'm grateful I'm still up to staying the course, doing it.

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