I woke up this morning with the first line of this poem running through my head, as if it began while I was still asleep. I did dream of the sea. I'm in a place in my life where I feel a continual need to cleanse. No, I do not take extra showers (we are in a major drought after all). I mean a cleanse of my spirit, a clean slate, tabula rasa as I learned for my first phrase in my first Latin class years ago. There is this urge—coming from where I know not—to purge, make room, get ready. I also do not know what I am to be making room for but I welcome its coming. Like the still sea before the next wave, I welcome the impending deluge.
This Space
Some More Painting
Saw this one in a dream.
Self Portrait
Weird little me.
Is It Like Riding a Bicycle?
I picked up my oil paints after a couple of years without them. I hope I remember how to do this. Testing on some flowers.
Pursue some path, however narrow or crooked, in which you can walk in love and reverence.
—Thoreau
Selkie women are the women you don’t understand. They are the women who know that they belong to another tribe, in another element. And so they seem as though they belong in yours - and they don’t. They are the women who seem to be listening to other voices, or music you can’t hear, or the call of distant bells. There is a faraway look in their eyes. Selkie women are the ones who look as though they have come out of the fairytales, because they did. The ones who look at the sea longingly, who look at the sky as their home. They do not fear death. They only fear imprisonment. Selkie women are the ones you can’t keep. It is a very bad idea to hide their sealskin. They will always find them again. Selkie women are the ones who create things, but look as though they came from another world. People fall in love with selkie women because they see them as conduits to something richer, stranger, more authentic. This is dangerous; wherever they came from, selkie women can’t get you there. You have to get there on your own.
—Theodora Goss