Gulls

Gulls / Oil on black canvas / 8x10 / $88 including shipping

sold! 

I'VE PROPPED OPEN THE BACK DOOR this morning and the dogs are celebrating by running in and out, just because they can. 

It's the first cool morning of the summer, and I am enjoying feeling the chilly air wash in. There are not many days in which I can prop the door open. Not many days in which the temperature is right and the bug quotient is right. So I celebrate with the dogs. 

It's 61 degrees and I am dressed for our walk in shorts and a T-shirt. I know I will be cold, but I haven't been cold for so long that it feels like a luxury. I will have all fall and all winter to wear long pants and long-sleeved shirts, so I shall sail through the open door and continue the celebration a little as I shiver. 

***
A Last Thought

September Tomatoes

The whiskey stink of rot has settled

in the garden, and a burst of fruit flies rises

when I touch the dying tomato plants.

Still, the claws of tiny yellow blossoms

flail in the air as I pull the vines up by the roots

and toss them in the compost.

It feels cruel. Something in me isn't ready

to let go of summer so easily. To destroy

what I've carefully cultivated all these months.

Those pale flowers might still have time to fruit.

My great-grandmother sang with the girls of her village

as they pulled the flax. Songs so old

and so tied to the season that the very sound

seemed to turn the weather.

- Karina Borowicz

Puddle Gulls

Puddle Gulls / oil on black canvas / 8x10 / $88 includes shipping

sold! 

WELL, I GUESS I took a week off last week. It wasn't planned, and there really wasn't anything wrong - I simply lost my momentum. 

And how much of life is really about that? I think a fair bit - at least of my life. 

While I do love starting things - projects, days, exercise regimens - I find sustaining them far more difficult. And finishing things? I am a Grade-F finisher. 

The Bird A Day project is one of my more well-sustained ventures, probably because it makes me so happy. I still love making the bird paintings, and I love it when you all buy them. The whole thing is very positive - and is a giant help to finding my way in life, post-Peter. 

So here's to the unscheduled week off, the chance to catch a breath in the hot August Confinement days. I recommend it. 

***

For Today

I'VE BEEN ENJOYING making limericks this week, for reasons I can't understand or explain. But it's fun! Why not try one, or 100? (It's a little addictive). 

Your standard limerick is five lines, with the rhyme scheme AA/BB/A. The rhythm is anapestic, which means two unstressed syllables are followed by a stressed one. 

The first and second line each has three anapests - da dum, da da dum, da da dum.

The middle two lines have two anapests each - da da da da dum, da da da da dum

And the final line goes back to three anapests - da dum. da da dum, da da dum

Of course, there are minor variations, squishing, squashing, etc. Limericks are supposed to be fun! 

Here's one that I made up to go with the painting above. Please add yours in the comments below, or email them to me at carrieBjacobson@gmail.com

There once was a gull with a thirst

Who looked for a fountain, but first

He found a small puddle

His joy wasn't subtle!

And in no time, his thirst was reversed.

Laughing Gull Over the Ocean

Laughing Gull Over the Ocean / oil on black canvas / 5x7 unframed / $68 includes shipping

sold! 

I'VE BEEN SPENDING a lot of time and a lot of psychic and spiritual energy clearing out my home. 

I am deep in it - and finding that while the decisions are difficult, they are not as difficult as they were when I started. Part of that is that I am angry at the stuff itself - that it's a part of my life, that it is taking all this space and all this energy. I am angry that we hauled it all around for so long - and of course, I am angry that Peter is dead and that I'm doing all of this alone. But mostly, that's an afterthought. Mostly, I am mad at the stuff itself.

And this makes it easier to toss it. Even some of the hard stuff - a scrapbook of items from our honeymoon in France, for instance. Metro tokens from trips I don't remember, menus from restaurants I can't recall, bills from hotels where we stayed for one night or maybe five. I hadn't opened that scrapbook in 20 years, and when I opened it, I thought I couldn't possibly throw it away. But the more I thought about it, the more I realized that tossing it was the right thing to do. And when I did, it felt great. It felt like relief. 

I will never forget our honeymoon. I will never forget the memorable restaurants, the hundreds of hours we walked through the streets of Paris, the photographs he took, the countryside we saw, the cathedrals we visited, the joy we shared at being together and being married. 

In the same way that Peter isn't IN the clothes that he bought, or IN the couch we put together, or IN the books he loved so much, he was not IN that scrapbook. He is in my heart, in my memories, in my soul. The stuff is just stuff - and needs to be gone. 

***

For Today

"To be an artist is to believe in life." 

Henry Moore

Laughing Gull

Laughing Gull / oil on black canvas / 5x7 / $68 including shipping

I GREW UP WITH GULLS, but as far as I can remember, I never heard a laughing gull until we moved to Wachapreague. Even here, they don't laugh all year - though I think they are here for most of the year. 

Their name describes them pretty completely. Imagine a Wicked Witch of the West laugh, but in a gull's high-pitched voice, and you'll have it. It's a sound I love - and a sound that makes me laugh - and one that also can be annoying, if you're trying to do something, and failing at it. There are the gulls, laughing their heads off at you. 

They were some of Peter's favorite seabirds, and we always listened for their return, much as we listened for the start of the peepers in the earliest spring days, and the hum of the cicadas as summer reached and waned. 

***

For Today

“My choice of color is dictated by tact and decorum stretched by an unholy desire to be outrageous. I’m trying to get color to the danger point where it’s too sweet or too noisy without actually making it too sweet or too noisy.”  

- Wolf Kahn