grey is my favorite color

I had planned on getting up early   taking a bath, with tea maybe.

Waking up gently.

Instead I slept in and walked to work with an apple,  milky Earl Grey in a thermos,
shivering, hurrying jerkily through the misty cold.
Later, an old man leaned in as I gave him his coffee, said
"Today should be canceled on account of the greyness."

Finished!!

I have a new room and I love it so much!

Yay!! I finally moved out of the basement room, and into the back room. Upstairs. That has 
windows. Two windows! I feel much better in this room. 

From just inside the door...I have lots of wall to paint on. 

 

The other side of the window. I have even more art space!

Loft! Under the loft there are two desks covered in piles of....of.....god, I don't even know. Stuff. Lots and lots of stuff. Someday, I will bring order to the chaos and then I will have a space for jewelry and a space for sewing. Or so I keep saying.

 

From the loft. Yes, that is paint all over the hardwood floor. It was there when I ripped up the carpet. It makes me feel less bad about making a mess. 

       The view from where I am sitting. :)  That dog is Panda, our new wolf dog. She loves mirrors.

                ...and couches.

Art in Progress

Before Medusa was a Greek girl who offended the goddess Athena, she was the third aspect of the Libyan goddess Athene (also called Neith, Metis, Anath or Ath-enna). Medusa was regarded as the seat of (female) wisdom. She is spiritual kin to Kali: both a life giver and death bringer. She is the storm, the calm, the destruction and the redemption.In Africa her face was said the be shrouded, because to view it was to gain the knowledge of your own death. And she has much bigger problems than snakes in her hair...

This started off as an exercise in how to make two different faces into one. I'm sure that I'll finish it soon...

 This painting has been consuming a lot of my time lately...

This painting is an experiment in "stream of consciousness" painting. I've only just started to go back in and develop the image. It was interesting to see how even when I disengaged and stopped paying attention to what forms I was painting with what colors, I still came up with a working sketch. 

Quit smoking and got a job.

Tired from waking.
Tired by the ritual of coffee, pills   that I always forget to take.
Tired of preparing food and eating cotton.
Tired of bones full of buckshot,   lead weighting limp wrists.
Tried from walking on legs that hate to stand.
            [too tired to care]
Tired from breathing.
Tired of my brain   dripping gasoline  -mercury smooth.
Tired of grabbing at thoughts that just slide off, down to my lungs.
And Tired     of coughing them out, sounding like that old, old man.
           [down by the liquor store? who can't hold his cigarettes?]

Dear Valued Customer,

Every day that I have to wake up and go to work I hate the idea of my job more and more. I hate working for a corporation. There is so much waste involved with the relative financial stability of large companies: small amounts of milk are poured down the drain every few minutes; trashcans have to be double bagged, and emptied when they are 2/3 full; all the boxes shipped to us involve ridiculous amounts of packing and packaging material (true story: we were once shipped a 2'x3'x1' box containing nothing but one large plastic bag and a roll of packing tape). I hate the blatant consumerism: the up-selling of mediocre food and the ridiculous prices attached to it; the thousands of cups that pass through our hands daily. I hate just saying "Yes," to people who force me to fill the (two) sugar shakers at least every hour. I hate the tone I take when I dislike a customer, but can't say anything. I especially hate getting up early to serve people who forget what a job like this is like.
The problem is - I really love doing my job. At least, when I'm actually being a barista. Things like perfect cappuccino milk - airy, but still velvety smooth and rich - thrill me so much that I can ignore the rest of it (at least until I have to get up the next morning).
So why then, do I get up every day, knowing that I'll come home in eight hours with sore feet and a backache, stinking of sour milk and strong coffee, burned, sticky and exhausted? Because I (speaking completely apart from my company and coworkers) want to make you the best cup of coffee that I possibly can. Which sounds, aloud, so...well, kiss-ass that you will actually never know this, because even if I told you, you wouldn't fully believe me. So, if I promise not to make you question how little I care about my menial job, will you occasionally pretend that I'm human?

Thanks! Have a nice day.

Recently seen in my room...