Winter Waxing Moon
Dominant white. Black Mountain is white. The lodgepoles have white flocking. The solar panels have disappeared under individual mounds of snow. The sky is a whitish blue. The steps up here are still snow covered. No new snow though since yesterday. Huge piles of snow from Ted’s plowing twice. 14 degrees. Winter on the mountain. This is, however, Colorado and the next few days have sunshine. The roads are clear.
These last three days I’ve had no obligations. Love that. SeoAh and I went to Walmart yesterday in Evergreen. She has glaucoma and needs eyedrops, like I do, but had run out. Thanks to modern tech the Evergreen pharmacy could contact Georgia, Georgia could, as the pharmacy clerk said, “Push a button.” Then, a text would go to SeoAh’s phone as we shopped. Not a fan of Walmart due to its low wages and small town downtown busting habits, but in this instance a good deal for SeoAh. It happened that way. While she shopped for bleach to give her hair highlights, a text came in.
Ran into a mussar friend at Walmart. Her husband has prostate cancer that has spread to his spine and, perhaps, his lungs. MRI tomorrow. He’s starting radiation and is already getting hormone treatment. Doesn’t sound good. I do like running into folks I know at the store. Small town living.
Apparently Saturdays are for new recipes. SeoAh made a sweet tofu wrapped rice confection, Japanese. Wonderful. Also, an egg drop soup with dumplings and rice cakes.
Jon’s got a new printing technique, one he used yesterday to “print” a paper bag. It’s amazing. He’s using found objects, mostly metal, to create colorful prints of shapes that look vaguely familiar, yet also abstract. He said in a later text that he’s glad Ruthie and I are exploring oils together. Me, too.
Here we are in another year. Took second son to the airport at 7 am. Big traffic jam about 10 minutes from the airport on Pena Road. Took 20 minutes to clear. Lot of pissed off people.
On the drive last night I thought about year themes and resolutions. Not a big resolution maker anymore. Nonetheless, I made some anyhow. In short form they are eat, write, paint, exercise, read, teach, cook.
Ruth has paint brush in hand working on a black and white version of a SeoAh and Murdoch photo. It’s so much fun to have her up here painting while I write this. Creativity bonds us. She’s using my oil paints, a medium with which she has little experience. She does have a lot of experience in acrylics, watercolors, photography. Her training has helped me a lot, too.
10 degrees on Shadow Mountain. A couple of inches of fluffy powder fell over night, a minor storm compared to what had been predicted earlier. The lodgepoles have white flocking. Black Mountain hides behind a gray blue cloud. The neighbor’s Christmas lights, now past their expiry date, still glitter.
The learning curve in both astrology and oil painting slopes almost straight up for me. My mind gets short of breath at times. I remember this from Latin. Slog. Slog. Slog. Oh! “Confusion,” I read, “is the sweat of the intellect.”
At almost 72 I’m no longer naive enough to think I can master anything, but I’ve proved to myself over and over that with patience (difficult for me at times) and either a good teacher or a lot of autodidactic effort, I can learn new things. Even new things that might seem unusual for me. Organic gardening. Beekeeping. Raising perennial flowers. Writing novels. Teaching Jewish religious school. Living at altitude. Cooking. The downside of this valedictory life, that’s a thing, is that I’ve not become Tolstoy or a commercial beekeeper or Top Chef, certainly no Latin scholar. But I have had the chance to peek behind the curtain of numerous activities I might have once thought, like German, beyond me.
I’m continuing my experiments with oil painting, getting more experience, wondering about all the tricks and tools of the trade. Making it up as I go along right now. Playing. Yes, I’m playing with two shiny new disciplines right now, oil painting and astrology. When I use that word, playing, and it is accurate, what always comes to mind is 
The oil painting. So far I’m imitating, at least in a way, Rothko. Although. I did see some cloud formations that I tried to recreate, or at least evoke. Not in my power yet. Though what I produced I liked for what it was.
You might say, oh, the power of suggestion. Could be a bit, I suppose. But recalling dreams when I haven’t been is big for me. Years of Jungian analysis, you know. Running toward something like astrology is a definite change in mindset. And, oil painting? I mean, come on.
Holiseason underlies and inflects all of this, creating moments of reflection and quiet, reinforcing attention to the Great Wheel. Feeling as positive about life as I have in a long, long time.
My friends Stefan and Lonnie have devoted the last three years to a traditional painting education. The atelier in Florence where they’ve studied makes the usual atelier argument that representational painting is real painting, the sharp turn taken by Cezanne, Monet, Van Gogh and later DuChamp, ManRay, Bacon, Pollock, Rothko a mistake.
I’ve not been idle. Using some small, 5×7, canvases I’ve begun to use oil paints. My first effort is here. Doesn’t pop like I hoped it would. I have three more of these small canvases painted with an undercoat. One yellow, one sap green, and one violet. Trying color field painting. Mark Rothko is my favorite abstract painter, so I thought I’d see what I could make using him as my inspiration.
After 12 years as a guide and docent at the Minneapolis Institute of Arts, art became an integral part of my life; yet, I’ve struggled to keep art in my life since moving to Colorado. The museums here are not compelling and driving down the hill takes time. Reading about art, looking at it online or in books has not given me the satisfaction I’ve searched for. Painting myself, which necessitates a look into art materials, theory, and careful looking at artists whose work I’d like to use as inspiration, may. I’m not there yet, but I’m having a hell of a lot of fun.