Let's go

somewhere vast and cold
unlike here
somewhere wild and alone

It's True

I have a love affair with shoes.  I find it very interesting how many women share this same obsession.  I've always been like this.  And recently I went shopping, which is rare, but I did.  I got, I think 5 pairs of shoes at once.  I guess the stars aligned that day.  I now have 47 pairs of shoes (I just counted yesterday for the first time ever).  On this recent shopping trip, I bought my first pair of white shoes ever!  I think I am starting to branch out with what I like :)

Comfortable & Practical

Sexy & Sophisticated

 Sookie? My husband says....

Clean & Stylish

And my very favorite of all! I saw these a few weeks before I actually  bought them, and was under the impression they did not have them in my size.  But when I happened to go shopping again, I found them unexpectedly in my size!  The even stranger thing is that ALL my life I have always hated hated hated animal prints, but for some reason I love these!

Sleeping in the Forest

 

I thought the earth remembered me,

she took me back so tenderly,

arranging her dark skirts, her pockets

full of lichens and seeds.

I slept as never before, a stone on the river bed,

nothing between me and the white fire of the stars

but my thoughts, and they floated light as moths

among the branches of the perfect trees.

All night I heard the small kingdoms

breathing around me, the insects,

and the birds who do their work in the darkness.

All night I rose and fell, as if in water,

grappling with a luminous doom. By morning

I had vanished at least a dozen times

into something better.

 

~Mary Oliver

 

 

Tired

I feel exhausted lately.
Despite my two recent vacations, I am still tired, and beginning to believe that the kind of tired I am feeling is drastic and hopeless fatigue.
I know that the only thing that will make me feel better is to be done with school & boards.
I just hope after that I can actually return to my normal self.  Whoever that is....
I have a lot to be thankful for, and I am just that thankful.
Everyday I am surrounded by people that unfortunately now are fighting for their lives in one way or another.
It makes everything else seem pointless, everything you stress about or are sad about, everything you want or desire, because this person may not live.  And that could be you, or someone you love.

But despite this slap in the face all the time, I am still tired.
I hate being tired, despite a lot of sleep from time to time.
5 months seems like forever right now.....

I can still remember at 16 yrs old walking into the Cy Twombly museum for the first time.  The smell, the sound on my shoes against the hardwood floors, the open space.  And then the first painting.  My eyes glancing upon the largest painting I've ever seen, and the only painting that has ever brought tears to my eyes.
This is a painting that takes hours to fully take in, perhaps multiple trips over years of time.  One of the largest paintings ever done my Cy Twombly, and it took him over 25 years to complete.  I love it, and I love going there just to sit and absorb it all in.

Houston, in general, is very fortunate to have a Cy Twombly Museum at all.  An entire museum devoted to one painter.  The ceilings that were specially designed allow natural lighting to grace the paintings filtered through meshlike material.  Cy Twombly came to this museum when it was built and hung each and every painting himself.  An interesting fact, but others emerge as well such as the fact that he is from Virginia & was once in the military servicing as a decoder. 

Over the years, I visit the museum in a scattered, unpredictable fashion.  Each time I am fascinated, and my own desire for painting grows.  Human behavior and interaction with art in general fascinates me.  And I am constantly wondering why can I look at this painting and be so moved, yet another can look at is a see nothing but scribbles their 4 year old could make.

I have searched several times over the years for interviews by Cy Twombly.  To my great surprise, I have only been able to find one.  That is because only one exists.  How astonishing really...a painter with this much worldwide success....and only one interview.  I love that.  I love his removal from the media.
When I found out last week that Cy Twombly died in Rome, I personally was in a pool in the Sonoran Desert overlooking giant boulders with a raven flying about making calls.  I was genuinely sad.  Usually this is not the case.  I find it melodramatic to be sad and complain when someone famous dies.  I don't have connections with very many famous people of course because I don't know them.  This makes logical sense to me.  But, obviously I feel different about this because Cy Twombly's paintings have had an impact on my teenage years and my paintings.  Someones work whom I admire, and whose paintings stir me.

The thought that Cy Twombly will never make another painting is truly saddening.  But it is no doubt his paintings have had their impact on many, and will continue to do so for many many many years.