Poor Planning
... has left me with one pair of oversized plaid pants and a t-shirt with "Paradise Island -- Nassau" and someone saying "oh shit" on it in tiny white letters as a shark gobbles him up. All else is in dryer, queued for washer, or in washer, so am sitting here sockless as well in ratty robe staring out at the lovely, non-snowing weather, biding my time.

All in the neighborhood have chosen today, Earth Day, to mow and chew and saw outdoors, so is deafening, even with windows still hermetically sealed against the winter winds (you can never be too careful in April).

Am anxious to sit outside and draw or paint, however. Possibly cows. Went last week to the Wagner Farm, first time in ever so long, and found the sights and smells calming.

The henhouse seemed so very familiar from visits to my great-aunt's farm in Massachusetts, where it was the duty of children to gather their own breakfast else go without. They didn't have running hot and cold water either, or a bathroom, just a kitchen pump and a gas stove with a "boiler". I remember being small enough to sit in the sink as the old woman scrubbed at me with a washcloth.

When visiting I slept in a bedroom with tiny pink roses on the wallpaper that always smelled like tiny pink roses that had died a long time ago, but never of the chamberpot that lived under the dressing table, since it was my duty to bring it downstairs every morning. In a drawer in this dressing table was an old diary that I remember trying to interpret, but never could. Too local, too adult, too cryptic, too much underlining, too many secret abbreviations.

At some point the pantry was converted to a bathroom, central heating was put in, and the chickens departed, leaving coops behind that disappeared by the visit the following year, my last. The great-aunt (and uncle) were gone.

Labels: art, printmaking

- posted by Cynthia @ 11:39 AM | | | Link |