I told her it would be here…

Last night was the end of the year dinner for my students, out little in-house graduation before the official event at Bard on Saturday. A generous trustee hosts it at their house every year. The students got dolled up and we presented them with a certificate that I designed. It’s a lovely event and this year seemed especially emotional. I’m very grateful to have been able to spend the last couple of years with these people. I got a little teary during my short speech to them. Maybe it was the excellent red wine.

And now is the chance to get some of the built up pressures of the past couple of months dealt with. Through some talks with good friends I feel like I’ve developed a clearer picture of how I want the next year to go. The warm weather is helping with that as well; somehow walking out the door in just my shirtsleeves always fills me with a sense of possibilities.

Oh and the boot? A friend told me her husband has been following the blog, and so when she showed off the footwear, I told her I’d put it up here for his delectation.

I’ve sat next to hotness…

I’m feeling down these past couple of days: cut off, out of it. And physically a bit wrong. The causes are multiple, but a big one is the fact that Monday was the anniversary of Phil’s death. Along with a couple of other dates in the year, it’s become a spot where I have to watch for my emotions to go into a nose dive. I’ve also been on a extended period of eating poorly and not moving as much as I’d like. Finding out what my tax debt for the past year is was not much of a help either.

Paradoxically, my solution in part to the eating issue is to cancel my weekly deliveries from Urban Organics. This is the second time I’ve used their service and both times I went into it with the idea that I would cook at home more, and eat healthier. But the result has been the opposite: a box of vegetables arrives, and while there is stuff in there that I like, there’s stuff that I don’t like as well, If I don’t eat it right away it starts to spoil, and then I feel guilty about buying stuff from the market. Which means that I eat out more and still have the sneaking suspicion that I could purchase the same amount of food myself for less. So no more deliveries, and I go back to shopping more regularly.

The other kooky thing I’m doing to cheer myself up Is to remind myself of the groovy people I have been lucky enough to make contact with this past year, including the fellow mischief-maker above. It’s now been three times that I’ve had fun with him, and we have the fourth on the schedule. So creepy as I may feel, there are folks out there willing to knock some sense into me. And I’m grateful for that. urban organics

As of today…

I’ve been around here for 49 years.

I have to say that the past few years have proved to be among the most surprising in all of my life.

As I noted last week, despite occasional gripes, I am one lucky duck. People talk about who they were in their past lives. Even if I believed in reincarnation, I really don’t have any curiosity about other existences, because this one is just too good.

I’ve gotten to do so many of the things, big and small that I hoped to. And I get to be in touch, through this medium, with so many thoughtful, questing minds. I wouldn’t want to be alive any other time.

If you can read this, know that I value knowing you. Have a great day.

Nobody Touch ANYTHING…

A strange day at work where three problems that have been dominating my conciousness for weeks suddenly resolved themselves all in the same hour and in ways that are close to the best possible outcome. Which can only make me ask “what is going on?” and “when does the bad news arrive?”

A little different:

Five Small Joys From Today:
1 – The flavor of what Hale and Hearty listed as “Boston Baked Bean soup with Smoked Sausage”: it actually reminded me of the baked beans of my youth and the ones I have made.
2 – Hearing my friend George’s voice on the phone as we planned our trip together this weekend. It’s been almost a year.
3 – Actually filing the small heap of papers that had accumulated on my desk
4 – Receiving my dvd of “The Hypnotic Eye”: trashy, quirky, filled with screeching line readings and actresses tearing their own faces off
5 – Being asked to do a job I think is very important. I was surprised that the forces that be would even think to ask me.

What I did, did I?

Ok, so here it is: I now have three shows up: new work in London, retrospective at the Tang in Saratoga Springs, and collaboarative video installations in San Francisco. So i think i can say that the harvest season is over. Next official deadline: new two channel video piece for group show in Jan. This harks back to what things were like for me twelve years ago, except then I didn’t have the added workload of running a graduate program. I wish I knew some other way to work, to be honest. This week I was frantically getting the videos for SF made into DVDs and fedexed so that they would arrive on time, Meanwhile there was a huge opening in Saratoga, attended by my Mother and Sister as well as a number of friends. After the dinner, I djed a dance party for the Skidmore students, an interesting effort since the record collection I was using started in the early sixties and ended around ’91. Luckily they all came ready to dance, so the only real problem was that their hopping up and down made the turntables skip on occasion.
I think this post should be firmly filed under count your blessings. Although each of these projects brought up wildly varied emotions, moment to moment , each was an oppurtunity I am grateful for:a chance most people in my field don’t have. I wish that I could proceed through them with grace, rather than by causing drama for the other people who work with me. Drama through shutting down and being uncommunicative. Drama through waiting til the last minute. Yes, everything got to where it needed to be at the right time but it still is at the expense of frayed nerves, for people that I know and care about. SO here’s a public apology to everyone who deserves one.

(side note to the shrink: just noticing that I can’t talk about good news without talking about how badly I’ve behaved – that must get a bit tedious for you, eh?)