not quite, but

no, not sick, not dying, just spending lots of time in the studio, cleaning and sorting and making.

Yesterday I channelled Annie (my very clean late nana) again and cleaned out my paper drawers so that I could actually store paper in them. Up to now they've been holding all my old art student work, actually the stuff that survived the last cull, but this time I was ruthless (or Annie) and chucked out nearly everything that couldn't be made into a sketchbook cover. I only kept three life drawings and two prints. And now I have a dedicated boxboard drawer, plus one for white paper and one for coloured -- luxury!

Today I'm waiting for the closest thing Canberra has got to a press mechanic to drop by. He said Mon or Tues, and if he doesn't show today I'm going to be sad. For the art school presses we use a guy from Sydney, but i don't think I can either afford to bring him here or wait for his next art school trip. I have leftover wariness from the process of moving the press -- I'd been waiting for a recommended group of removalists to show up & quote for me for weeks, and they just never showed, but then someone else recommended the beautiful Beethoven guys and they were fantastic. I'll just hope that this fellow is more the Beethoven than the other bunch.

I have less than two weeks before I go to the Sturt Winter School, and then I'm flying to Brisbane to see my darling friend Sacha and attend a conference all about books. Then I have another week, and then my open studio, and then I have a month until my first solo show. EEEK! So my entries here will be even more sporadic than usual. Sorry.

Even BB and Bumblebee are getting out of my way -- they're going on a roadtrip next week around the mountain country, visiting caves & snow and beaches and whatever, just the two of them, equipped with audio books and gameboys and no doubt an icecream every day. Sigh. I think I'll book a cottage by the sea for October, when I can relax again.

In other news, Bumblebee has been gorging himself on Michael Jackson videos and songs. I managed to record a three-hour 'Top 50 MJ' fest on VH1, and B is discovering the lovely high highs and absolutely low lows of the MJ oeuvre. We had a big discussion about living out your fantasies on screen, and I think he's starting to really understand the difference between constructed reality and lived reality (unlike MJ!). And we're having great discussions about why certain videos work and others don't. There are some ripper live clips, I can see why his concerts sold out instantly, but FIFTY of them? That's a bunch of vultures in charge, poor bugger.

IMHO, the best MJ album is Off the Wall, but even so, I'm getting pretty sick of it now. Damn, I'd just weaned B off these albums before MJ died, and he was showing some progress, he was hooked on 'Ziggy Stardust'. Now we're back a few steps. But only for a while, I hope. All this too shall pass. I keep repeating that, constantly.

Just last night

I was telling Best Beloved that I want to track down a copy of The Wiz.

Why? he asked.

Because Michael Jackson makes my heart ache when I watch him before all his insecurities erupted in a bodily fashion.



Well, obviously you can.

Oh rats, I always said he'd never make it past 50, and I also made a small bet with BB that he'd never fulfill the highly ambitious (and debt-fuelled) plans for a ginormous comeback tour.

So I guess I was right, but I don't feel smug about it. MJ has always made me feel sorrowful, maybe because I grew up watching him from wee one to weird one.

Poor old Bumblebee is a bit shattered. He's had MJ on high rotation for ages, and it's been vaguely disturbing me that the man had the power to attract 11 yo boys from such a geographical and chronological distance. But now he can stay young forever, and be worshipped from afar, which is exactly what he's always wanted.

I wonder if he wanted to be preserved or something? I guess we'll find out soon enough.


Postscript: Cheered immensely by a lovely silly bit of chemistry thanks to Coconut with a Motor. Absolutely nothing to do with MJ, but just the ticket, nonetheless:

I don't usually use drycleaners

but sometimes there's no avoiding them.



I think if I ever start a band (in my old age, when my hands seize up), this will be its name. Punk will be fully revived, we'll all be too old to care what the young ones think, and we'll be angry about being ditched in cavernous rest homes (recovering from the mighty wave of babyboomers). Any leftover babyboomers will be too deaf to hear my musical shrieks, and come to think of it, so will my child's generation. Ahh, you've got to plan ahead.

And no, I don't know which of my cats yakked on my favorite winter coat. Both of them look guilty. Constantly. Actually, it's probably Mr Pooter, because of the combination of guilt and smugness.

goings and comings

Today Bumblebee and I had a mental health day. He stayed home from school to nurse his hacking cough, and I spent the day de-cluttering. It was ace.

I went through the house and found all the books that were lying around waiting to be read, and made an on-the-spot decision about whether I would EVER get around to reading them. Then I went through my shelves (not BB's, I wouldn't dare) and culled all the books that had accumulated that I didn't want to read again.

There's been a big pile of old clothes lying in the door of my study for AGES. That was sorted into various piles: hand-me-downs for littler boys, a bag for Vinnies, a bag for Aussiejunk.

And then we took them away and gave them to various organisations. And felt great.

When we dropped into Vinnies at Dickson we discovered an excellent winter sale. We found Bumblebee a very cool demin jacket and I got two nice cardies. We felt ok about buying them, because we had space.

Then when we went to Woollies to buy toothpaste (something the local organic vegie store doesn't provide), they gave us a big slab of chocolate cake each as part of some Quaint-arse frequent flyers promotion. Bumblebee was stoked, and claimed it was our reward for finally doing the clean-up.

I was so inspired, I went home and wrote some important emails I've been forgetting about. I applied for a residency in New Zealand, I followed through on a tip about the chance to buy some new type. Both of which are chances, but you've got to be in to win, haven't you?


Inspired by those, I made some useful phone calls. I'm a phone-shy person; I hate making calls and I hate talking on the phone for ages, it makes my ears sweaty. I used to have eczema behind my ears, and I think a lot of my aversion stems back to that time. But today! I had one of my EUREKA! dreams the other day, about how to find a press mechanic. So I acted upon my dream and found a fellow who is going to visit my studio early next week. HUZZAR!

So there is a chance that my press will be operational by the time I have my studio warming -- which, by the way, has changed dates. I remember promising the 4th of July. But that date went squidgy when I discovered that it clashed badly with a paying function in the complex's gallery -- a function that ISN'T very compatible with a joyful launching of a space.

So the new date is 1 August:



I'm sure I won't have the press running, even if it is operational, but it would be nice to have it a bit cleaner than it is now (it's already cleaner than it was when it moved in, thanks to Bernice's dexterity with sandpaper and oil). I won't be able to do much at all other than stand around waving a glass and talking to people as they wander in and out, but what fun! This date also coincides with an exhibition in the ANCA studio by John Loane of Veridian Press (he prints all of Mike Parr's prints, as well as many other Aust art biggies), so it's a double-barrelled fun time.

And according to Progressive Dinner Party, it is time to plant garlic! I just bought some local garlic the other day, feeling like I wanted to grow some, and now I find that my urge is BASIC and ANCIENT and INSTINCTIVE. I love it when I get things right. Now I'm going to act like a real woman and make some vege nachos with real (pressure-cooked) kidney beans. W00T!

Boxing

I have a lovely man yawning pointedly from the bed in the next room, so I'll keep this short and sweet.

I've been teaching a box-making workshop all weekend to a small but thoughtful group. They all wanted to make at least a clamshell box, and I told them it would take the whole weekend to do it. They couldn't believe it, but by the end of the first day, when they'd just glued together their second internal tray, they understood why.

But lo! They made things of beauty! Look!




(also a little paper box we did at the end for fun)






(inside of above box)

Fixing a hole

I finished my Barbara Hanrahan Diaries this morning, and had a little cry. She dredges up so many fears about quality of life, productiveness, happiness, etc etc. Then felt a little lossy hole, that one you get when you're in between good books.

Decided to cheer myself up by going down to Dickson and checking my mailbox, and lo! found a surprise parcel from Wendy James, with her latest book, Why She Loves Him. Am very excited. I tried to email you, Wendy, to say so, but my email bounced back. So here I am, hoping you'll read this, to let me say THANKS.

No hole! Feeling a delicious tingle of anticipation. Lovely.

bogging

I've decided that sometimes the spaces between blog posts are called bogging. They're the times when there is so much to do -- usually for other people -- that I feel guilty about blogging because it means I'm spending time on me and not on them, and they might see the blog and wonder why I'm not doing their job/quality time. What an awful, boggy thought.

I'm re-reading Barbara Hanrahan's diary, and she has lots of awful boggy thoughts, interspersed with such moments of resolve and enthusiasm that I'm glad I'm wading through the boggy bits. I'm also trying to remember to mark down the bits I want to send Thirdcat, because I can see why she wants to have them nearby.

Anyway, that's all I can write at the moment. I'm going to have a big day of running around sorting out things and maybe finishing something, anything, that gives me a sense of crossing something off a list. I'm teaching again this weekend, at Megalo: making boxes. Still spaces left! Plus now I've got six weeks of uni break, which gives me some time to cross off a whole lot of other things from the big list floating in my head. But first I have to write up my assessment report cards... back to it.