It’s dif­fi­cult to jug­gle cre­at­ing art and know­ing it. Shall I read what’s up with A Book About Death, work on web design ideas with to cel­e­brate the upcom­ing release of The Eve of Fluxus, or fin­ish the final two can­vases for BCAC?

Part of me wants to clean house and stop apol­o­giz­ing for my kitchen mess. Dishes piled win­dowsill high and then there’s this prob­lem with the cat and hock­ing up a huge hair­ball which I just now this sec­ond RIGHT THIS SECOND noticed by the chair over there under the library window.

Another part wishes I could have gone with local friends to the Pocosin Arts get-​away, or maybe some­where else cre­ative but osteo-​awful joints resist home­steading else­where. Once the stu­dio is open and dogs are in place, it’ll be art-​time today.

A big sec­tion of me, today, wishes for more sleep since grand­son Oliver spent the night and woke at 6 a.m. full of vim and vigor. Vim? Great name for a char­ac­ter in a short story. Vim Sparkle­ton. He could have been Spencer Montgomery’s room­mate in board­ing school.

Speak­ing of roommates…

Mur­pat needs a hug, she had wrist repair surgery this week.*sqUeEZe*

I think of my Mom every day. There’s a thought in here about mourn­ing her death before she died. We lost her about a year before she went. My grand­fa­ther John Theodore Chap­man told my mother, in 1956, “I wish my brain had gone before my body. Watch­ing myself dete­ri­o­rate is torture.”

A hic­cup in the process of release occurred and the dif­fi­culty remains. And they gave her pain, with me she had none. The nurs­ing home, the hos­pi­tal — my Mom never broke a bone in her body and within six months she’d bro­ken her elbow, and a hip so badly frac­tured her pelvis was shoved into her inter­nal organs. We know they dropped her. She couldn’t have fallen because she couldn’t walk. Pretty sim­ple. Pain. She kept try­ing to smile for me. This gets in the way of Ruth Remem­ber­ing. Pain. She smiled. Can you bear it? I’m work­ing on it.

Quote of the week from Fayet­teville, NC where a scuf­fle took place in a funeral home:

“McBryde said Webb grabbed her by both arms and half-​drug her through the room.
“He had me jacked up like I was a man,” she said.

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