Won't change your mind

Let’s talk about art shall we.
I’m reading Henry Miller’s Big Sur and the Oranges of Hieronymus Bosch , and there he discusses how artists often have to work to support themselves in mundane standard jobs, doing dreary tasks, instead of creating, and how at times they find themselves in places, locations, where supporters and patrons can provide them with the means, time and space to generate art, prose, or whatever endeavor they pursue while the rest of the regular people go about doing their regular things.
So a simple criticism of this would be, what makes those people more entitled to living off of someone else’s work ethic, and then showing disdain for their simple ways.
I know many artists, some of them, take advantage of the opportunity to not work because a sister, parent, in-law, or partner is willing to make it possible for them to manage in whatever way they can. And that for me is the bottom line. Due to a myriad of reasons, some people don’t work, are not employed, but it’s not because they shouldn’t have to, it’s because someone has accommodated their inability or at times, choice to provide for themselves.
It’s those others that I’m thinking about today, the ones that actually make it possible for us to see, hear and read masterful works.

Do not miss your chance

We, or I should say I, because Eamon reclused himself from any involvement, had a graduation party for Jack Henry this weekend. The amount of uproar, chaos, and resentment that this event caused is immeasurable. Why that is the case, I have no idea, or actually I do, but not so much that it should have caused as much trouble as it has.
Now that it is over, everyone is back to some semblance of normal, all is forgotten. And that, is living with men.

After all is said and done

I have a bit of treatise on the
misogynistic response to the three women who recently escaped the 10 year captivity in a Cleveland home.
Where is the outrage on the public relations makeover, the equivalent of an abusive husband or partner throwing money at a badly beaten woman and telling her to go clean herself up and buy something pretty to wear.
These women were tortured and terrorized for ten years.  Not many of us can imagine, nor will we have to now that they have new hair, teeth, makeup, the dirty mess can all be swept away and we buy it.
But, it can’t it’s too ugly to even imagine; kept on a dirty mattress for days, with your head duct taped in place, for so long that the range of motion in your neck is forever compromised, this and many other details are left out of the story, because we are a culture not interested in the facts, the reality, a simple resolution, a feel good moment, brought to us by our sponsors is ultimately what is acceptable.
It’s not. Cleveland, now the capital of crimes against women, in a big way, we don’t just have domestic violence we have serial killers with the remains of disenfranchised women, never missed by anyone, found in a home, and now the case of these three girls whose lives were deemed worthless by a man, and now by a society who want a good looking  group  of gals to tell the story of triumph  over a bad situation.  And this is why we all lose, all of us, because this, is now the only solution, making the media rounds, selling books, telling the same small story that is acceptable as opposed to shrieking, screaming, crying, and actually requiring us all to face the bare and raw truth of it.

This is all that I have gotten

I feel so totally judged by my husband and children, and I  know think they feel the same way about me , but I swear I am not doing that.
I colored my hair, as it’s something I’ve been thinking about for a long time. Just some red, a few streaks.
A close friend laughed when I walked into her house, Eamon made that Ppfffhh sound of air escaping from a tire. And no one whom I work with has said a word, except for they have made a lot of body language comments, eyes widened, a little smirking.
I shouldn’t be bothered. I love it, it’s not a statement it’s just hair. But, how do you tell the world your doing something for yourself, not for any other reason, and at the same time, know it doesn’t matter because caring what any other source outside of yourself potentially thinks, makes for a confused and muddled existence.

From far away

I was too busy to enjoy my children when they were young. There was so much to do, and in my mind, I had to get it done in a timely fashion, as if someone was checking my work.
Out in the world, or at my job, I watch the young mothers, with strollers, wagons and slings, busy with summer book club, trips to the pool, all the stuff that keeps us active and connected in the summer which has less of the structure of the school year.
I would like to do it again, and do a better job, with less intention and more obliviosity.