Thursday was the first anniversary of the first of my three eye surgeries. I’m learning to live with the results and have stopped complaining about them, but that and the ever escalating chaos coming out of DC occupied my attention last week and made me late with the post. But I have three new birds. I’m happy with the two small pieces, #30, the Magpie inspired by the ones in our garden in Newcastle, and #29, the Vulterine below, but it’s #31, the Condor above, which is much larger, that is what I’ve been striving for. Paul says it’s the most Maureen McCarron of all the Maureen McCarrons he’s witnessed me create. It may not be as dramatic or expressive as some of the others, but it has a maturity that made me judge the previous work and eliminate half a dozen or so from my website. It has also inspired me to rethink only numbering them and to add their species to their titles. I now see the ones that got cut as studies, the work I did as I sussed out how to use the charcoal and to make the marks I wanted to achieve. I plan to do new versions of a couple of them - definitely the rooster, and maybe the frigate, which was the first drawing in the series. Adding white paint and mummy colored pastel to the mix was part of my learning process, but the Condor has neither of these. It’s just the charcoal, buffed, blended and aggressively erased.

I also plan to do a much larger white cockatoo with its crown feathers fully unfurled, but I’m not sure the paper I have is big enough for what I envision. Because that’s my goal. Much bigger birds, enormous birds, birds that truly grasp their godlike quality - but for that I need a lot more space than I currently have in Provincetown. Not to mention a place to store them and how to transport them once I move to the UK. This would require another grant or winning the lottery. So it remains a dream for the time being. Which reminds me of the dream Paul had when we first hooked up. In it, he was helping me hang a show because the work was huge and in ornate gilded frames, and way too heavy for me to handle. Back then, the birds were on tiny wood panels and I was adamant about not framing them. But I am always open to suggestions and within a couple months, I had switched to paper, which demands to be framed, and the work had doubled in size. Soon enough, it tripled. When I returned to wood panels, my minis were a thing of the past as I began the paintings that made up the show I had this summer. All of which were framed. Now I’m back to paper. Arches, my preferred brand, makes wide rolls, but maybe I should consider canvas although I don’t care for a surface with that much texture. Either way, gilded frames or not, I still need that big fat grant or to win the lottery. Best get cracking on that then, onward.

I haven’t had time to get any artwork done since I arrived home in Provincetown late Monday night, but I did do an owl, #28 above, on Saturday before I left. However, I took a lot of snapshots out the airplane windows I sat next to on the flights back. One is of the remnants from Hurricane Melissa as we flew through it on the way to Dublin from Newcastle, as well as the rain-lashed window of the Dublin to Boston plane as it was waiting to take off. Again, like the flights to the UK, I sat in window seats but this time I was next to emergency exits on both planes so I had lots of legroom and nobody smashing into me with the back of their seat. I shared the space with a young man named Trace who bore a startling resemblance to an old college friend of mine named Barry when he was young, and who had died while I was in the UK. Same long black curly hair, same glasses, and boho hippie clothes. When I showed Trace pictures of Barry from 50 years ago, it freaked him out, but it made me happy. It was as if Barry was sitting with me, not his young doppelganger.

Anyway, I’m back and have been very busy plowing through the bills and paperwork I had dreaded coming home to. I got a little refund from Expedia because I prepaid more for my tickets than what the trip finally cost, and a check arrived for my cut of the sale of the collage I did this summer for the PAAM 12x12 Benefit Auction, so that plus the Substack subscription I mentioned last week were enough to pay everything except the balance of what I owe my eye surgeon. So, if I eat frugally this month, I’ll be ok until December. Especially if I do well at the Holiday Craft Fair at the Canteen Thanksgiving weekend. I heard about another craft fair in town next month that I’ve applied to since the one I did last year has been cancelled.

Have I told you my favorite Buddhist parable about the woman and the tigers? Being chased by tigers, she climbs over the side of a cliff and is hanging from a vine only to see there are tigers down below her too. She also sees that a rat is chewing on her vine and that she will eventually fall. Then she notices a cluster of berries growing out of the cliff next to her. She plucks the berries and eats them. They are delicious. End of story - in other words, stay in the moment. Eat the berries. Onward.