I tend to keep politics off Substack but Wednesday night, I had the first bout of my usual insomnia since I left for the UK a little over two weeks ago. I sleep great here, which I rarely do at home. I’m also online a lot less when I’m here but I do keep informed, and the East Wing demolition was the proverbial last straw in a series of escalating last straws, so I am now officially afraid to go home. My Buddhist practice teaches me to stay in the moment and I will until it is time to go back in November, but what waits for me there besides the DC chaos are things I don’t want to deal with. Most of them are financial - a stack of medical bills, a rent increase, a significant drop in sales and opportunities. I didn’t fill a prescription right before I left because it went from $8 to $95 last month. I won’t die without it, but I’ll definitely be uncomfortable soon enough. That said, I know everybody is going through the same thing and some have it much worse. I don’t have kids or ailing parents and I don’t have student loan debt or credit cards. So yeah, stay in the moment and enjoy this UK reprieve. Last weekend, we went to Cullercoats again and I photographed the cliffs and caves along the beach. I also set up a workstation with the new drawing board and an easel next to the glass doors that lead to the back garden and get the morning light. I finished #24, the small piece above and then #25, a much larger one which is proving to be impossible to get a good shot of. Perhaps I can get a better one for next week. We hung the three little pieces of other people’s art that I brought in my suitcase and my sitting room now looks like I live here. We saw some work in Sunderland and an exhibition by Uta Kögelsberger in the Hatton Gallery at Newcastle University. That’s a picture of me below, a very rare thing, taken by my fiancé Paul Brewster, as I contemplate a photo in the show which is primarily video presentations. I love my life here. It’s the simple things. Onward.