I recently ordered some seeds.

I started some new paintings. White paint. Scrap parts. Bits of drawing.

I made much more of a meal than I normally do.
We pledged to organize and clean and eat better.
I sat down in earnest to work on a grant application.

I put a big pile of books next to the bed as if that will make me read them.

There's so much excitement/potential energy of the turning of a year, like the turning of an anything, and in the end really all I can hope for is some good luck and some mild progress in the growing of vegetables and paintings.



take care,
Rachael
top image from http://agronomyday.cropsci.uiuc.edu/2003/exhibits/soybean_germplasm.html

This gorgeous Van Gogh drawing of Etten is worth sharing as is the news that I no longer have a big black fiberglass cast around my left ankle. The first bit (that cold, empty, moving, rythmic drawing from 1881) is much more full of meaning than the plastic thing around my foot but both are connected in my head as revelations of freedom...The freedom to depict a place as it was and felt and the freedom to hobble around a little easier.

My kind doctor took my cast off and gave me an aircast instead so that even though I'm not 100% and I have to keep on my crutches and keep careful, at least I can shower.

It will come in handy because I've just developed a cooking fascination spurred on by the gift of the 75th edition of the Joy of Cooking and my discovery of this blog and this book (based on this project) and now with this blog. I can wobble around the kitchen a little easier, now. Thank you Dr!

Rachael

It's not just me, right? There is something inherently reflective, sappy, deeply emotional about the holidays even though it seems like it's all just boxes, bows, and expectations. It's gotten pretty commercial out there.

My husband and I are amazingly lucky kids born into wonderful families and given unbelievable opportunities in our lives. We are generally aware of what we owe to the people we love, the world at large, and the next gang to come around. But sometimes it takes a few days of comfort, calm, kindness and good food to remember just how good we have it and what we have to give back.

It's not much but I'm pasting in one of the best paintings of my last year here with a sappy and true thank you for reading.


Stay out of trouble, kids...

Rachael

Different

There was a big figure 3 --white on dark brown. Its upper loop was the same size as the lower loop. So many people thought. and yet this upper loop was
SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT
larger than the lower one.

This figure 3 always looked to the left -- never to the right. At the same time it looked slightly downward, for only in appearance did this figure stand perfectly straight. In reality, not easily discernable, the upper
SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT
larger part inclined to the left.

And so this big white figure 3 always looked to the left and a little downward.
Or perhaps it was different.

I can't stop reading and relishing in these prose poems of Kandinsky from 1912. Concrete and abstract but all full of question, doubt, discovery, and SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT, SOMEWHAT of a true truth, and that's different from the garden variety of truthiness...

take care,
Rachael

simple and true.
happy.
Rachael