IS IT JUST ME OR....

does everything take much longer than it used to? Or is it just that I don't recall how long everything actually took in the vague time-scale implied by "used to"? Or am I really losing brain cells in the so-called normal process of ageing? Pah, my brain cells, the last time I counted, are all there. Like my shoes. I occasionally get rid of the ones that are of no use to me anymore but I suppose it's possible that I accidentally threw out some that still had a purpose.

How do I know that I can still fire on all cylinders? Because if you ask me to do something specific - say, to find the cheapest overland way to get to, um, Glockamorra, and all the people there named Joe or Josephine who will put you up and cook a fabulous breakfast - I'll be on the task instantly and you'll get an answer within 24 hours. Or, if you ask me to find the meaning of life it might take me a few days to check the experts' answers and then to get through on the hot line to the Divine Tee-Shirted One but, for sure, I'll get the job done pretty sharpish. (Don't ask me, okay? I'm really busy trying to catch up with other things).

Obviously my statement: everything takes longer than it used to is inaccurate. What takes me longer (than I want it to take) are the tasks that I set myself. They take a long time because I make huge demands on myself and then get frightened that I can't meet them as well and as fast as I think I should and so I delay and delay and delay completion because to complete means to expose....blah blah blah and ho ho hum. Same old same old boring perfectionist syndrome......gahhhhh! That's it. Enough. I'm throwing out the perfectionist cells in my brain. I will train myself to do something badly and fast every day. Yes! Bad and fast, way to go.

Above is a fast but not too bad face I did in a trial version of Corel Painter (they let you try it free for 90 days). I should have chapter 21 of the autobio ready in a couple more days. Maybe.

Changing the subject, I must mention Cynthia Korzekwa's wonderful book art for housewives (arte per massaie) which she sent me, swapped for my The Joy of Letting Women Down. I've long been a fan of her blog and we had planned to meet during my recent stay in Rome but my time was too short so we only spoke on the phone. Cynthia's been living in Italy for the past twenty years but is from Texas. The book (in Italian, with English translation at the end) consists of her bold, bright, funny and beautifully designed illustrations with quirky captions such as: "she sewed herself", "she collected rain for her friends" along with light-hearted instructions for how to rescue all sorts of usually discarded household items and turn them into attractive, fun and useful artefacts. You can order the book from her and you don't have to be a housewife or househusband to enjoy using it. In her words:

Bricolage is a creative response to changing conditions which recycles elements to adapt to their new circumstances. Thus bricolage is, in some ways, a form of evolution. It assembles and constructs that which is needed from that which is available.

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SHOE FETISHISTS LOOK AWAY NOW

Is this the shoe wardrobe of a mature, cosmopolitan, world-travelled lady artist? Or the rejects of a clueless twelve-year old? I'm afraid it's my shoe collection, all of it, apart from the Birkenstock sandals I'm wearing. Those flower-patterned booties are a recent demented addition. The grown-up black boots at the back are those I wore once to the Guardian party and will never wear again. Likewise the brown mettallic-sheen lace-up ankle boots (top left)which I bought, expensively, in Paris on another demented impulse three years ago and wore twice (they make my feet look enormous and take forever to put on and take off).

It's the weather, you see. The sun has finally come out and with it, the seasonal urge to clear everything out and start again. I'm sure there is some deep Freudian reason for the shoe choices of my life but I'm damned if I know what it is. Maybe y'all can enlighten me?

Meanwhile, I'm preparing the next installment of the autobio as some kind of multi-media thing.

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BILLOWING

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 A billowing tarpaulin over a scaffold on which men are working. The movement of the wind rippling the fabric inspired me to video this  impromptu performance and to compose a soundtrack for it.

A SHORT FILM ABOUT BILLOWING

At the same height as my top floor windows, men are at work on a scaffold erected on the side of a house directly opposite. I have to keep the blinds drawn most of the time so that I'm not on display but I've been doing a bit of spying myself, camera in hand, because of the fabulous spectacle presented by a draped tarpaulin, blowing in the wind. Isn't billowing wonderful?

The video should be appearing any minute but you can go see it on Blaugustine right now.

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WAY OUT (edited)

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I edited out the last repetition of the poem at the end, it was not necessary. Otherwise this video is the same as when I posted it yesterday, April 27th: a visual and auditory reflection on the patterns people and things make in space.

BLAUGUSTINE IS FIVE YEARS OLD TODAY

To celebrate, here's a little something cooked up from left-overs (past fragments shot when I only had my digital still-camera's tiny movie option) with narration written and spoken by me yesterday, plus a bonus: part of Elyne Road by the wonderful Toumani Diabaté - thanks to Teju Cole for this music which I had not heard before. And by the way, DO NOT MISS Cole's brilliant book, Every Day Is For The Thief , now available from Amazon.

Here are the words of my poem-like thing - thanks to Dave of Via Negativa for this genre-definition. In my case, it means randomly breaking up a normal paragraph into poem-like lines.

WAY OUT

Peopled patterns moving across the landscape of time in perfect symmetry every dot intending to go somewhere or to return, clusters of intention gathering then dissolving into slow dance or frenzied run, leaving tracks in the sand and in the air. What would they look like if we could see them, these traces of our restless passage, on our way in and on our way out?

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PARENTS

They fuck you up, your mum and dad. They may not mean to, but they do. They fill you with the faults they had And add some extra, just for you. Philip Larkin

Writing about my mother inevitably brings up thoughts about my parents, my childhood, and all sorts of paths leading in and out of that territory, partly factual, partly selective memory and partly buried emotion. The first line of Larkin's poem is so famous because it's so true. It echoes with everyone, or nearly everyone, who has had parents. Some of the things we are fucked up about do not come from our parents but some do, that's undeniable.

Being a good parent, or a 'good enough' parent, is a talent which doesn't necessarily pop up the minute a baby lands in the arms and the life of a formerly baby-free woman and her mate (if a mate is present). Some people are hopeless at the parenting art, some struggle to learn it and a few - very few, in my opinion - take to it like ducks to water or cats to kittens.

I feel very fortunate to have had the parents I had, not because they were good parents (they were not) but because they were two interesting, complex and marvellous people I got to know very well by virtue of being one of their children. As a child - and sometimes far into adulthood - a Parent is seen only in capital letters. Those letters might spell love or rage or need but they are always capitalised. It takes a lot of growing up to finally accept that Parents are only people, ordinary humans just like us.

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